Tuesday, April 7, 2026

Have We Come Down To Just Three Fabs For All Practical Purposes? April 7, 2026

Locator: 50455INTC.

I was confused why Elon Musk would partner with Intel. For me, this was completely counterintuitive, but Elon Musk has a habit of being counterintuitive. No details of the partnership between Intel and TeraFab were publicly revealed in the sources I could find. My hunch: Elon Musk's 30-year strategy is not to buy processors (GPUs, CPUS, or TPUs) from from another source but rather to make its own fabs.   

One can conjecture until the cows come home and one can do their own sleuthing. 

For example -- connect these three dots (it's not difficult): Elon Musk -- Donald Trump -- Intel. We'll do that later. 

For now, I have enough details now to pay close attention to what happens next but the Musk-Trump-Intel connection is huge. In the meantime, for an investor, this information is invaluable. But ... but .... but .... there is one last question I needed to ask. See below the fold below (the asterisks.

This conversation applies only to GPUs, CPUs, and TPUs, the primary (only) blades that are the operating units for AI. This can be confusing; content and typographical errors likely

It does not apply to storage so the mention of Micron below can be disregarded. Similarly, TI and Samsung can be disregarded within the "confines" of my three queries.

I'll post the three AI prompts in the opposite order in which they were asked. The first AI, therefore, is the most important for this discussion.

Third AI prompt and reply:

Among US companies or companies with major fabs in the US, have we come down to only three: TSMC, Intel, and Global Foundries?  

Second AI prompt and reply:

Of the companies mentioned (Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Google, Meta, Broadcom, and startups like Cerebras and Groq, which of those companies have their own FABs? 


I'm not sure whether that statement with regard to Broadcom is accurate. Other sources suggest that Broadcom has no fabs and relies on TSMC.

First AI prompt and reply:

With the just announced partnership of Intel and Elon Musk's TeraFab in Austin, Texas, it appears the three top competitors for GPUs / CPUs / TPUs are Nvidia, AMD, and Intel. Amazon and Apple remain dependent on in-house CPUs and TPUs. Others that I might be forgetting? 

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The Usual Suspect
One Last Query

AI query: Which Fab is primarily responsible for providing chips for all of Elon Musk's activities? 

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