Musk Picks Intel 14A for TeraFab, Tells TSMC to Stand Down
By Daniel Rao | Oct 18, 2026 Photo: Intel's D1X development fab in Hillsboro, Oregon — a 14nm-era file photo, not 14A. The Hillsboro R&D campus is now where Intel links arms with Applied Materials. Credit: Intel Free Press, CC BY-SA 2.0. Elon Musk has just bet a twenty-billion-dollar factory on a chip process that isn't finished yet — and told the finest chipmaker on the planet that it can, at most, rent a corner of the building. Both things happened within about a fortnight, and together they make the biggest week Intel's foundry business has had in a decade. The first half is the real news. On Tesla's first-quarter earnings call back in April, Musk said, on the record: "We plan to use Intel's 14A process, which is state-of-the-art and in fact not yet totally complete." He added that "by the time TeraFab scales up, 14A will be probably fairly mature or ready for prime time," calling it "the right move" and praising "th...