Tesla's dedicated Optimus robot factory at Giga Texas is closing in on a finished steel frame, with structural assembly now roughly five column grids from the building's north perimeter beam, according to drone footage posted on September 17 by site observer Joe Tegtmeyer1,3. The primary skeleton is in its final stretch approximately six months after Tesla broke ground on the North Campus site in late March.
Concrete pours are already underway on three upper floors while crews continue laying rebar and pouring grade-beam footings at ground level2. The parallel workflow, with steel rising at one end and concrete setting at the other, mirrors the scheduling approach Tesla used during construction of the original Giga Texas vehicle plant.
Scale of the facility
The Optimus plant is part of a more than 5.2-million-square-foot expansion of Giga Texas's North Campus. Permit filings indicate the building extends over 4,000 feet in length. The Seoul Economic Daily reported the facility is planned at approximately 7 million square feet, or roughly 650,000 square meters, a scale described as comparable to an automobile plant.
Tegtmeyer's footage also captured a relatively wide open area on the east side of the structure, which observers say could become high-ceiling production space, and a stairwell structure on the west side running up to the roof.
Production targets and pilot line
Tesla's targeted production start for the Optimus plant is 2027. Elon Musk has pegged the long-term output target at 10 million Optimus units per year once the line reaches full capacity. Separately, Tesla is standing up a one-million-unit pilot line at its Fremont, California factory, where the current Gen 3 robot entered mass production in January. The Fremont plant is expected to build tens of thousands of units this year.
The Seoul Economic Daily noted that initial production at the Fremont pilot line could begin as early as the fourth quarter of this year.
Adjacent chip facility and trademark dispute
Construction on the adjacent Terafab chip fabrication facility, a joint Tesla and SpaceX project, was actively underway as of early September. Terafab is planned as a $16.8 billion complex spanning roughly 100 million square feet at a Grimes County site, meant to produce chips for Optimus robots, Tesla's AI computing needs, and SpaceX's orbital data-center ambitions.
The Terafab name is the subject of a trademark dispute. TERA-print LLC, which has held a federal trademark for "Tera-Fab" since 2021, sent Tesla and SpaceX a cease-and-desist letter five days after Tesla filed three U.S. trademark applications for "Terafab" and "Tesla Terafab" on May 18. By June 10, TERA-print was threatening to sue for federal trademark infringement, false designation of origin, and unfair competition. Tesla, SpaceX, and SpaceXAI filed for declaratory judgment in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. TERA-print told PCMag it discussed a settlement with Tesla as recently as September 2.
Tesla's robotics team landed in Ningbo on September 16 and began production audits for Optimus on September 17, focusing on verifying exclusivity and consistency for mass production with supply-chain partners[3]. ANALYSIS The simultaneous push on the Texas factory shell, the Fremont pilot line, and Chinese supply-chain audits points to Tesla running three parallel workstreams to compress the timeline between prototype and volume production of Optimus.
The Seoul Economic Daily framed the construction pace against Chinese competitors: Morgan Stanley projected China's humanoid robot output at 50,000 units this year, while TrendForce forecast 100,000 units.