Elon Musk tells Jamie Dimon that America faces a catastrophic Zero Memory Fab crisis as there is no …
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recenlty virtually joined an event hosted by CEO Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan’s office in New York. Shared on social media platfrom X, the conversation between the two CEOs ranged from SpaceX’s financial trajectory to bold visions of lunar AI data centers and the looming semiconductor crisis in the United States. While Musk confirmed SpaceX’s decision to go public, he stressed that the lack of domestic high-volume computer memory manufacturing poses a far greater threat to America’s technological future.
No domestic production of memory chips
During the conversation, Musk stated that the US presently produces zero high-volume computer memory chips, a vulnerability he described as ‘catastropic’. He further revealed that Micron’s Idaho facility will not reach volume production until 2028, while another plant in New York is expected around 2029-30. Even then, output will represent only a fraction of what is required to meet the exponential demand of AI systems. “There’s not a single high-volume computer memory fab in America right now. Zero,” Musk said, underscoring the urgency of the situation.As per Musk the crisis has intensified by the insatiable appetite for data from AI and robotics, while the required bandwidth and memory capacity far beyond human needs. He also explained that the while humans operate a few hundred bits per second, computers can demand trillions, making memory infrastructure the backbone of future innovation.To address this shortfall, Musk is aggresivly building the Terafab project which aims at scaling the memoary production to levels capable of supporting orbital AI data centers and next-generation Starlink satellites. He positioned Terafab as essential not just for SpaceX’s ambitions but for America’s national competitiveness in the AI era. Musk tied the crisis to broader national security concerns, highlighting SpaceX’s Starshield division as a vital communications backbone for US intelligence and defense. Without domestic memory fabs, he warned, America risks dependency on foreign suppliers for critical infrastructure.
SpaceX to go public
Apart from this lingering crisis Musk also confirmed that SpaceX, which has been cash-flow positive since 2014–15, will finally go public. He explained that past private equity rounds were not fundraising but liquidity events for employees and investors. The IPO is driven by an upcoming capital-intensive phase, including plans to deploy over 100,000 next-generation communication satellites and orbital AI data centers.Along with this, he also outlined his plans for AI data centers on the Moon, leveraging low gravity and electromagnetic rail guns to launch compute modules into deep space. He argued that space-based infrastructure solves terrestrial resistance to power plants, enabling solar-powered “star energy” far beyond Earth’s limitations. The Moon, he said, could scale to 1,000 terawatts annually, while Mars remains the long-term terraforming goal.
