SpaceX is building a foundry in Bastrop, Texas, to manufacture blades and vanes for natural-gas turbines, aiming to bypass a supply bottleneck facing new AI data centers. Elon Musk says in-house casting could bring gas generation online up to 18 months sooner than conventional procurement.
The project surfaced through job listings and land purchases near SpaceX’s Starlink factory before Musk confirmed its purpose. He said SpaceX and Tesla are also trying to build 100 gigawatts of annual solar-production capacity each, but argued that gas will be needed to supplement and bootstrap solar for several years. Those production targets and timelines are company claims.
Electricity has become a constraint alongside advanced chips. The International Energy Agency expects global data-center power use to roughly double by 2030. GE Vernova says its gas-turbine production is essentially sold out through that year, driven in large part by demand for AI infrastructure.
Private gas plants can avoid waiting for grid connections, but they shift environmental costs to communities near data centers. Turbine projects linked to Musk’s companies and other operators have already prompted lawsuits and health studies over air pollution. Faster blade production could ease one construction bottleneck without resolving fuel emissions, permitting or local opposition.