A building spanning 2,315 acres is almost 4 square miles in size. It dwarfs any building on earth and is intended to provide end-to-end chip manufacturing starting with design, fab, quality control, and packaging. And arch-Technocrat Musk says he needs all this to build his own cars, robots, data centers, and spaceships. Don't forget that Musk's grandfather was the head of the Technocracy movement in Canada during the 30s and 40s. ? Patrick Wood, Editor.

Elon Musk is about to build something so big it will make the Pentagon look like a strip mall.

Tesla and SpaceX confirmed Thursday that Terafab, their jointly built semiconductor megafactory, will rise in Grimes County, Texas, just outside Houston, with a first phase price tag of $16.8 billion.

The finished complex is slated to top 100 million square feet, a footprint that would blow past every structure ever built and instantly become the largest building in the world.

Musk, who runs both companies, called the facility "the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far."

For scale, that beats out the current record holder, China's New Century Global Center in Chengdu, which tops out around 18.9 million square feet with an indoor beach and ski slope tucked inside.