Elon Musk confirmed that a secret foundry SpaceX has been building in Bastrop, Texas, is designed to manufacture turbine blades and vanes in-house, aiming to accelerate natural gas turbine production by up to 18 months. The confirmation followed a report from The Information, which cited job listings referencing a “blades and vanes foundry” and findings from due diligence specialist Corey Trinetti, who had tracked SpaceX’s acquisition of roughly 830 acres near its Starlink factory in Bastrop.
Musk said SpaceX and Tesla are each building 100GW of annual solar production capacity, but natural gas remains necessary to bridge power needs in the near term. The move addresses a growing bottleneck in AI infrastructure: beyond GPU shortages, data centers increasingly face power constraints, with turbine maker GE Vernova reportedly sold out of capacity through 2030. Casting turbine blades capable of withstanding extreme heat is a highly specialized process currently mastered by only a handful of companies worldwide, all operating at capacity.
If successful, SpaceX would gain a manufacturing capability few competitors could quickly replicate. However, faster turbine deployment has also drawn scrutiny, including accusations from the NAACP regarding unpermitted turbine operations at SpaceX’s Memphis data center site, and separate research linking gas turbine emissions near data centers to health risks for nearby communities.
