Musk confirms $10B Tesla solar factory near Houston

Tesla has broken ground — or at least started the paperwork — on a $10 billion solar manufacturing plant near Houston, Texas. CEO Elon Musk confirmed the project in a post on X, where he branded it "Project Crystal Sun." The factory is expected to churn out everything from component parts to finished solar cells and panels, according to BGR.

The timing lines up with a separate Musk move: SpaceX has placed an order for 100 gigawatts of solar production equipment from German manufacturer Singulus Technologies, BGR reports. Musk explained the purchase on X with a typically cryptic line — "This is for Starmind to create a sentient sun." Starmind is SpaceX's proposed constellation of AI data center satellites, a cluster of thousands of spacecraft meant to harvest continuous solar power in orbit and beam AI computations back down to Earth.

The numbers behind the ambition are substantial. The U.S. Energy Information Administration puts American electricity consumption at 4.2 million gigawatt-hours, and BGR notes the country's wind and solar sources kicked in 86 GW of generation in 2025. BGR also estimates a 100 GW factory could, running over several years, produce enough equipment to offset about 20% of current U.S. energy consumption.

Don't clear your calendar yet. Project Crystal Sun is slated to start operations in the first quarter of 2029. BGR points out it would take just five plants of that scale, each producing 100 GW of equipment a year, to fully offset the nation's present power use. The effort would also mark a comeback for Tesla after the company pulled the plug on its failed solar roof program.