First steel up at Giga Texas North Campus

Drone footage released on 27 May 2026 shows the first steel structure standing at Tesla's dedicated Optimus factory, located on the new North Campus expansion of Giga Texas in Austin. It is the first time Tesla's humanoid-robot programme has a building of its own — until now, prototype Optimus units have been assembled in shared space inside the existing Giga Texas envelope.

The building going up is a single structure within a much larger plan. Tesla has filed permits to add more than 5.2 million square feet of new building space across the North Campus by the end of 2026, with construction cost estimates in the $5 billion to $10 billion range.

Capacity target: up to 10 million Optimus units per year

Tesla's stated long-term capacity goal for the Texas Optimus line is up to 10 million robots per year. That figure assumes the factory eventually houses multiple parallel assembly lines on the V4 architecture — the next-generation Optimus design Tesla previewed earlier in 2026.

Near-term, the picture is more modest. Initial Optimus production continues at Tesla's California facility, where the company has been refining the V3 build process and supplier chain. The Texas plant is expected to come online for high-volume manufacturing in 2027, with the intervening period spent on tooling installation and pilot runs.

If Tesla hits the 10 million-per-year ceiling — a big if — Optimus production volume would exceed Tesla's combined automotive output by an order of magnitude.

North Campus is more than Optimus

The Optimus factory is one of four major projects rising on the Giga Texas North Campus expansion. The others, all under construction or permitted:

  • Terafab — a chip fabrication facility being built as a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, targeting silicon for Tesla's AI5 inference chip and adjacent compute workloads.
  • Cybercab test track — a closed-course validation facility for the autonomous Robotaxi programme, separate from the public-road testing now happening in Austin.
  • Road infrastructure and supporting facilities — internal logistics roads, parking, and utility upgrades sized for the campus's eventual workforce.

The combined buildout doubles the Giga Texas footprint and reframes the site from a vehicle plant with side projects into a multi-product industrial campus.

Why this matters for European watchers

The Optimus programme is currently a US-only story — there is no European production plan and no announced sales channel for the robot. But the scale of the Texas Optimus commitment is large enough to compete with Tesla's automotive capital allocation, and that has knock-on effects for Giga Berlin's expansion budget. Several European industry analysts are already asking whether Berlin's planned phase-two buildout slips as the Optimus and Terafab projects pull capital toward Austin. Tesla has not commented on the trade-off.