Tesla's new fab fantasy has Chanos rolling his eyes

New narrative, same Elon

Jim Chanos basically heard Tesla’s latest pitch and said, “Sure, why not add a few trillion dollars to the bill?” According to the article, Musk’s team has been asking suppliers like Applied Materials, Lam Research, and Tokyo Electron for pricing on gear tied to Terafab, a joint venture between Tesla and SpaceX.

Why investors are doing a double take

Bernstein analysts estimate the project could eventually demand $5 trillion to $13 trillion in capital spending. That’s not a typo, and yes, that’s the kind of number that makes even the boldest bulls reach for a calculator and a stress ball.

Chanos used the moment to dunk on Tesla’s ever-shifting story line, basically asking why anyone would obsess over FSD and robotaxis when the company now seems to be flirting with the idea of building AI chip fabs at civilization-scale cost.

The bigger AI bubble backdrop

This isn’t happening in a vacuum. Chanos has been warning for months that the AI capex boom looks bubbly, and he’s been especially skeptical of the idea that GPUs are a forever asset rather than something that depreciates fast.

That matters for Tesla shareholders because every new Musk mega-project comes with the same question: is this a real growth engine, or just another chapter in the “trust us, the future is enormous” playbook?

SpaceX is pulling in the spotlight too

The story also circles back to SpaceX, which is reportedly gearing up for a potentially massive IPO. In other words, Tesla investors aren’t just getting a car company story anymore — they’re being pulled into a broader Musk ecosystem that keeps getting more expensive, more ambitious, and harder to value with old-school spreadsheets.

Big picture: Tesla keeps trying to sell a bigger destiny, but the market still has to decide whether that destiny is genius, a distraction, or both.