📌 UPDATE — May 15, 2026
Fresh aerial footage from drone photographer Joe Tegtmeyer confirms the Optimus factory foundation is now progressing across three distinct sections simultaneously. In what appears to be Phase 1's south end, a large depressed graded area has received approximately 0.5–1 meters of gravel and crushed concrete fill — a meaningful step toward slab preparation. Tegtmeyer also noted that all four major construction projects at Giga Texas are advancing concurrently, though he may skip next week's flyover to cover Starship Flight 12 at Starbase.
Giga Texas is no longer just a car factory. Drone footage captured on May 13, 2026 by aerial observer Joe Tegtmeyer shows simultaneous construction progress across four major sites on the Austin campus — most notably the 'E Advanced Chip Fab' and the foundation work for the dedicated Optimus robot manufacturing facility on the North Campus.
Two Facilities That Change What Giga Texas Is
The chip fab site — referred to internally as the 'E Advanced Chip Fab' — is in active site preparation, with workshops being relocated, materials staged, and soil sample drill rigs visible at work. This aligns with Elon Musk's March 2026 announcement of Terafab, a joint semiconductor manufacturing initiative involving Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI. According to reports at the time, Terafab is designed to produce chips for Tesla vehicles, Optimus robots, and high-powered space computing applications — targeting 1 trillion watts of computing power per year. The estimated investment for the broader Terafab project has been reported at $20 billion or more.
Separately, the North Campus Optimus factory foundation is actively progressing. Geopier foundation equipment was observed on site as recently as April 2026, and the latest footage confirms that work continues at pace. Tesla announced the dedicated high-volume Optimus facility in November 2025, with permit documents indicating plans for over 5.2 million square feet of new building space on the North Campus by the end of 2026. The investment range cited for the 10-million-unit-capacity facility is $5 billion to $10 billion, according to permit and planning documents.
The Production Timeline Taking Shape
The construction urgency makes more sense when mapped against Tesla's stated timelines. Low-volume Optimus production from the Austin facility is projected to begin as early as summer 2026 — meaning the foundation work visible today needs to become a functioning factory in a matter of months. Full-scale Optimus V4 production is targeted for 2027, with consumer availability by the end of that year.
For context, mass production of Optimus Gen 3 began at Tesla's Fremont factory on January 21, 2026, with approximately 300 units deployed internally for learning purposes. Fremont is targeting roughly 1 million units per year. The Austin facility is intended to dwarf that — with a stated goal of 10 million units annually by 2027. That's an extraordinary ramp, and the pace of ground-level construction today is one of the clearest signals that Tesla is treating the timeline as real, not aspirational.
What This Means for the Austin Campus
Giga Texas began as a vehicle manufacturing hub. What's taking shape now is something considerably broader: a vertically integrated campus where Tesla designs and fabricates its own chips, assembles its own humanoid robots, and produces vehicles — all under one geographic footprint. The chip fab in particular represents a strategic shift toward silicon independence that has implications well beyond Austin, touching every Tesla product that depends on custom compute hardware.
Whether the construction pace can actually deliver a functioning Optimus factory by summer 2026 remains the open question. Foundations are a long way from production lines. But the fact that drill rigs, foundation equipment, and site relocation work are all active simultaneously suggests Tesla isn't treating any of these projects as sequential — they're running them in parallel, and betting that the timelines hold.
Sarah focuses on Tesla Energy, SpaceX missions, and the broader Musk AI portfolio. Former data analyst in clean energy. Based in San Francisco.
Sources verified at publish time. Spotted an inaccuracy? Email editorial@basenor.com.
