News
Tesla’s Elon Musk shuts the door on Gigafactory Texas talk, but for how long?
George Strait once said that all of his exes live in Texas, and maybe Elon Musk doesn’t want his new electric vehicle facility to be infiltrated by the country music legend’s past lovers.
Just kidding.
While we all patiently wait for Tesla’s CEO to announce the location of its next vehicle production plant, I was pretty sure that Texas had been confirmed as the spot. After seeing some reports, I dug a little deeper and found that the State of Texas had some records, including purchase price agreements, on a plot of land just outside of Austin.
However, when I reported the news, Elon responded and told us at Teslarati that the company had the option to buy the land, but they had not secured a purchase agreement and exercised its right to purchase the property.
I have to admit, I was pretty shocked. I have been following the situation closely for months, and it is pretty evident that Texas certainly has the most advantages. Not to mention, Elon definitely seems to be leaning toward it. He’s been talking about Texas since January, and we’ve already talked about the distinct advantages the state holds over any other location.
However, Musk wasn’t done there. He then added that Tesla was looking at several locations. I’m assuming Tulsa, Oklahoma, is also in the mix considering that has been a location that is very open to taking its oil roots and trading them in for a new electrified infrastructure that will create a string of sustainable transportation production lines in the state.
However, it is really evident that Tesla might be having some second thoughts on the Lone Star State…or are they?
First, let’s consider the details of the land plot in question in Texas. It’s 2,100 acres, its $5.2 million bucks, and its really perfect for what Tesla has wanted. We know that the new factory is set to be the biggest one yet because both Zachary Kirkhorn and Elon said they are going to start calling the factories “Tera” instead of “Giga.”
To put the size of the land into perspective, Fremont sits on 370 acres, Giga Shanghai on 210 acres, and Giga Berlin on 740 acres. This means the prospective Texas land plot is nearly three times as big as Giga Berlin, which is the factory that will produce Tesla cars for all of Europe, and it is all going to be used to create the Cybertruck and the Model Y.
We know the demand for the Cybertruck is enormous. The pre-order number is not officially public knowledge. Still, there is some indication that Tesla is getting near three-quarters of a million reservations for the truck and its tough, robust exterior.
This is a preview from our weekly newsletter. Each week I go ‘Beyond the News’ and handcraft a special edition that includes my thoughts on the biggest stories, why it matters, and how it could impact the future.
A big thanks to our long-time supporters and new subscribers! Thank you.
We know that Tesla wants to build the plant in the middle of the country. That could mean anything, from North Dakota to Texas literally, and it could go slightly West to Colorado, and slightly East to Missouri. That’s what is confusing.
Now that there are apparently “several locations” in the mix, the real question is: Why is the Texas deal taking so long? Is Tesla looking to negotiate an even lower price? I decided to dig a little more.
According to Texas A&M University’s “Texas Rural Land Prices” page, where the college has the price of land from Q4 1971 up until Q1 2020, the most recent cost of an acre of property in the state is $2,986. The prospective plot of land where Tesla could build its next factory is 2,100 acres. So the value of the property, according to these statistics, is $6,270,600. According to the application that Tesla and the State of Texas have, the land price that was agreed upon is $5,298,275, giving the company a nearly $1 million discount. It is about a 16% discount according to my handy, dandy calculator.
Texas has also announced its intentions to give the automaker a sweet incentive package to the tune of $68 million, according to reports. That’s a lot of scratch, and it could certainly help with the purchase price, the labor costs of constructing the building, and more.
It is just tough to say why the deal is taking a while. The Cybertruck’s Dual and Tri-Motor variants are going to be produced at the tail-end of 2021, and with Tesla’s track record with the Model Y in the US and the Model 3 in China, they’ll be built well before then. That would give Tesla, if the company started construction in July, 18 months to complete the Cybertruck portion of the factory. Fremont could handle Model Y production until the new factory’s Phase 2 is completed.
I am personally excited to see where the factory ends up, and I really, genuinely think that Texas is where the factory will end up.
Where do you think the factory will be when its all said and done? And why do you think Tesla is kind of dragging its feet through the purchase process?
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s companies made up with Apple but OpenAI still on the hook
Elon Musk’s X Corp and SpaceXAI dropped their Apple antitrust suit, leaving OpenAI as defendant.
X Corp and SpaceXAI, Elon Musk’s social platform and AI venture, have dropped Apple from the antitrust lawsuit that they filed against the iPhone maker and OpenAI last year. In a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, attorneys for X and SpaceXAI moved to dismiss the Apple portion of the case, first reported by Reuters. The filing does not explain why the companies are dropping Apple or say whether a settlement was reached.
X and SpaceXAI say they intend to keep pursuing the case against OpenAI, which remains a defendant. That resolves the dispute with one company while leaving the core allegation intact against the other, with no public accounting of what changed in between.
The lawsuit dates to August 2025, when xAI and X sued Apple and OpenAI, arguing that Apple’s decision to make ChatGPT the only generative AI chatbot built into iOS gave OpenAI an unfair structural advantage. The complaint claimed ChatGPT controlled roughly 80 percent of the chatbot market at the time, while Grok held only a few percent. It sought billions of dollars in damages and asked the court to unwind the arrangement.
Elon Musk’s xAI and X file antitrust suit against Apple and OpenAI over AI exclusivity
The filing followed weeks of Musk publicly complaining that Grok and X weren’t appearing in Apple’s “Must Have” App Store section, though Grok ranked second in the Productivity category and X ranked first in News at the time. He accused Apple of “playing politics” and warned of immediate legal action before following through days later.
Apple and OpenAI tried to get the case thrown out, but a federal judge denied both motions in November, ruling the dispute was better suited to summary judgment than an early dismissal. That decision sent the case into discovery, which is presumably what led to Monday’s filing.
Hey @Apple App Store, why do you refuse to put either 𝕏 or Grok in your “Must Have” section when 𝕏 is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps?
Are you playing politics? What gives? Inquiring minds want to know. https://t.co/3wenLZGtwG
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 11, 2025
The timing is notable given how Musk’s sentiment toward Apple has shifted, with Musk noting that he was open to letting Grok power a revamped Siri after a user suggested Apple replace its aging assistant with xAI’s model.
xAI, the AI venture Musk folded into X Corp last year, has since combined with SpaceX under the SpaceXAI brand. That structure now puts X, Grok and SpaceX’s rocket and satellite businesses under one roof as Musk pushes his AI ambitions beyond chatbots.
OpenAI remains the sole defendant going forward, and Musk’s companies have not said if there’s any changes to those original claims. Apple and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the filing.
News
Why SpaceX is finishing another space-internet system that isn’t Starlink
SpaceX launched three final O3b mPower satellites Sunday, finishing a lesser known SES satellite network.
SpaceX had an 87 minute window opening at 2:49 p.m. Eastern on Sunday to fly a Falcon 9 out of Cape Canaveral carrying the final three satellites for SES’s O3b mPower constellation, a project that has taken more than a decade to finish since Boeing and SES first signed SpaceX on for the work.
Unlike the thousands of Starlink satellites SpaceX has stacked into orbit over the years, O3b mPower flies in a different neighborhood entirely. The three new satellites, tagged F11, F12 and F13, are headed for medium Earth orbit at roughly 5,000 miles up, more than ten times higher than Starlink’s shell around 340 miles but still a small fraction of the 22,000 miles where old school geostationary satellites sit. That middle position is the whole point, because a satellite that far out needs far fewer siblings to blanket the globe than a low orbit constellation does. Essentially, SES only needed 13 satellites total to build a network offering quick, steady service that used to require thousands of spacecraft.
With most people having heard plenty about Starlink and almost nothing about O3b mPower, SES and SpaceX already blend the two networks for some customers. Both SpaceX and SES sell satellite broadband, but they’re aimed at different buyers. Starlink is built for volume, direct to consumers, RVs, homes, small businesses, plus a growing aviation and maritime business. O3b mPower skips consumers entirely and sells enterprise grade connectivity to airlines, cruise lines, offshore energy operators, telecoms needing backhaul, and governments, priced and provisioned more like a dedicated circuit.
A 2023 partnership lets cruise ships combine Starlink’s speed with O3b mPower’s steady capacity depending on what a ship needs at a given moment. Sunday’s completed 13 satellite constellation effectively finishes the medium orbit half of that pairing, years after.
Sunday’s mission was already a something on SpaceX’s manifest well before O3b mPower entered the picture. This flight marked its 29th trip to orbit, a history that includes two crewed Axiom missions, the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope and 22 separate Starlink batches. SpaceX has landed boosters on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas so often that Sunday’s touchdown attempt, if it went as planned, was set to be the 661st successful Falcon booster landing to date.
For a company that pushed the Starlink constellation past 11,000 satellites back in August, almost entirely through bulk launches from California, Sunday’s flight was a reminder that SpaceX’s schedule still has room for someone else’s satellites too. SES gets a finished network built for a narrower set of customers, and Falcon 9 gets one more line on an already long resume.
Elon Musk
Tesla gives the Roadster an official “Go for launch” demonstration date
Tesla teased an October 1 Roadster reveal, reviving years of delayed SpaceX thruster hover promises.
Tesla teased an October 1 event date for its next generation Roadster, posting an image on X Saturday that shows the car lit up like it is sitting on a launch pad, with the date “10.01” stamped across the bottom and the caption “Go for launch.” A countdown clock on Tesla’s Roadster order page now points to the same date, which falls on a Thursday. The company has not said where the event will happen or whether it will be streamed at the moment. Stay with us @Teslarati for live updates.
Go for launch pic.twitter.com/Khu03eiZ04
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 12, 2026
Tesla has since sent formal invitations to reservation holders confirming the event will take place in Waco, Texas, about 90 minutes north of its Austin headquarters, based on a digital ticket shared on X by Sawyer Merritt. Tesla did not name the exact venue, though Waco sits close to SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, rocket test site, previously reported as the planned location for a Roadster thruster demonstration. The invite sets the reveal for 8:30 p.m. Eastern on October 1, requires RSVPs by midnight on September 16, and limits entry to guests 21 and older. Invitations are non-transferable.
The tease follows nine years of a project defined by unimaginable specs along with slipped dates. Musk first showed the second generation Roadster in November 2017 as a surprise reveal at the end of the Tesla Semi event, promising a 0 to 60 mph time under two seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, 620 miles of range from a 200 kWh battery, and production starting in 2020. At last November’s shareholder meeting, Musk set an April 1 demo date and joked the choice gave him “deniability” if it slipped again, which it did, moving first to late April, then to “a month or so,” then to August.
Tesla Roadster SpaceX Package’s 1.1-second 0-60 mph launch visualized in concept video
Whatever Tesla shows on October 1 is expected to center on the SpaceX developed thruster package Musk has described since 2018. Internally code named A71, a nod to the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the system reportedly uses cold gas thrusters fed by a composite overwrapped pressure vessel, the same tank design SpaceX uses on Falcon 9. Musk has said a thruster equipped Roadster could hit 60 mph in about 1.1 seconds under roughly 2.75 g of launch force, well past the 1.9 second figure quoted for the standard car. That version reportedly will not be street legal and has reportedly been discussed as a limited run sold through a track only program.
The standard Roadster is still expected to carry the original $200,000 base price and $250,000 Founders Series tier, both set when Tesla opened $50,000 and $250,000 reservations in 2017. Tesla VP of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy has confirmed production will happen at Gigafactory Texas, with Musk targeting 2027 or 2028, 12 to 18 months after whatever the company demonstrates next month.
Elon Musk’s companies made up with Apple but OpenAI still on the hook
Why SpaceX is finishing another space-internet system that isn’t Starlink
