Skip to content
‹ Back to IndustriesBusiness Services

The Early Scale: Tesla and SpaceX Commit $16.8B to 'Terafab,' Their Own Texas Chip Factory

Tesla and SpaceX have announced a $16.8 billion investment in a chip manufacturing facility in Texas named 'Terafab.' This move highlights their commitment to enhancing their supply chain capabilities. Additionally, Procore has acquired DroneDeploy for $845 million and Progress Software purchased Domo's AI platform for $400 million.

This story was produced through MarketScale. See how Business Services teams put it to work with Executive Thought Leadership.

Promoted content from The Early Scale on MarketScale.

By MarketScale Newsroom · · The Early ScaleB2b NewsMorning BriefMarketscale
Share
Listen to The Early Scale

Your daily B2B briefing.

AUDIO
0:00—
The Early Scale: Tesla and SpaceX Commit $16.8B to 'Terafab,' Their Own Texas Chip Factory

Key takeaways

01

Tesla and SpaceX to invest $16.8 billion in a Texas chip factory named 'Terafab.'

02

Procore acquires DroneDeploy for $845 million, folding drone imagery and site analytics into its construction project management software.

03

Progress Software buys Domo's AI platform for $400 million, expanding its AI capabilities.

Free workspace

Turn your Business Services expertise into content.

Record interviews, organize footage, and write with AI on a free trial of the MarketScale platform for qualifying companies. No demo required, no credit card.

Try it Free

The lead

The deals are getting bigger and the AI is getting more autonomous. We have a $16.8 billion chip factory, a $845 million construction-tech acquisition, and a $400 million AI data platform changing hands. If you're still thinking of AI as a productivity experiment, the capital markets are telling you something different. These are infrastructure bets, and they're being made at speed.

Tesla and SpaceX Commit $16.8B to 'Terafab,' Their Own Texas Chip Factory

The Big Three

Tesla and SpaceX Commit $16.8B to 'Terafab,' Their Own Texas Chip Factory

Chatgpt image aug 7 2026 03 32 35 pm

Elon Musk's two largest companies are moving into semiconductor manufacturing, committing an initial $16.8 billion to a facility in Grimes County, Texas, according to TechCrunch. The plant is designed to supply chips for Optimus robots, robotaxis, and Starlink satellites, effectively cutting Musk's empire off from its dependence on third-party foundries. Samsung has already signed a $16.5 billion deal to manufacture Tesla's AI6 chips at its Taylor, Texas fab, according to Data Center Dynamics, signaling this is a multi-vendor, multi-decade supply chain play.

The B2B angle: Any enterprise buying AI hardware or autonomous equipment from the Tesla-SpaceX ecosystem should model a world where Musk controls his own silicon supply, which changes pricing leverage, roadmap visibility, and vendor dependency calculations.

Procore Acquires DroneDeploy for $845M, Collapsing the Gap Between Drone Data and Project Management

Procore acquires DroneDeploy for $845M, giving construction teams a direct line from drone data to project management

Procore is paying $845 million for reality-capture platform DroneDeploy, folding drone imagery, 3D mapping, and site analytics directly into its construction project management software, according to Engineering News-Record. The acquisition eliminates the handoff between field capture and back-office decision-making that has slowed construction digitization for years. For owners, contractors, and subcontractors already on Procore, site data will now flow into the same system where schedules, budgets, and RFIs live.

The B2B angle: Construction firms not yet using drone-based reality capture should treat this acquisition as the moment the capability goes mainstream, and build it into their next project tech stack review.

Progress Software Buys Domo's AI and Data Platform for $400M, Adding 2,400+ Enterprise Customers

Progress Software acquires Domo's AI and data platform for $400 million

Progress Software is acquiring Domo's AI and data platform business for $400 million, picking up more than 2,400 enterprise customers and an agentic analytics layer, according to GlobeNewswire. The deal adds Domo's embedded BI and AI-agent capabilities to Progress's existing infrastructure stack, accelerating its push into the enterprise AI segment. For Domo customers, the question is what happens to roadmap priorities when a new owner with different core competencies takes the wheel.

The B2B angle: Domo enterprise customers should schedule a roadmap review with their account team immediately and document their current integration dependencies before the ownership transition closes.

Also worth knowing

Fiserv's Commerce Hub and SnapPay are integrating with Stuut's agentic AI platform, which has already processed more than $2 billion in B2B invoices since the startup's 2024 founding. Agentic AI is arriving in accounts receivable faster than most CFOs have planned for.

ECN launched ABM Matcher, letting B2B advertisers upload target account lists and match them against office digital-out-of-home audiences across the UK, France, and Germany, according to AP Newswire. It is the first time account-based targeting has been applied to premium office DOOH inventory, and it gives B2B marketers a measurable physical-world channel that mirrors how ABM works online.

Rockstar Energy founder Russ Savage disclosed a roughly 4.7% stake in Celsius Holdings and is publicly campaigning to replace CEO John Fieldly, according to CNBC. Celsius stock surged on the news. For B2B suppliers and distribution partners in the energy drink channel, a leadership fight at a major brand is a procurement and contract-stability signal worth watching.

By the numbers

$16.8B
Initial investment committed by Tesla and SpaceX to build Terafab, their semiconductor manufacturing facility in Grimes County, Texas.
$16.5B
Value of Samsung's deal to manufacture Tesla's AI6 chips at its Taylor, Texas fabrication plant, running parallel to the Terafab build.
$845M
Price Procore paid to acquire DroneDeploy, integrating reality capture directly into its construction project management platform.
$400M
Price Progress Software is paying for Domo's AI and data platform business, including more than 2,400 enterprise customers.
2,400+
Enterprise customers Progress Software gains through the Domo acquisition, immediately expanding its addressable footprint.
$2B+
B2B invoices already processed by Stuut's agentic AI platform since its 2024 founding, now integrating with Fiserv's Commerce Hub and SnapPay.
4.7%
Stake Rockstar Energy founder Russ Savage disclosed in Celsius Holdings as he campaigns publicly to replace the company's CEO.
9.8%
Professional services industry EBITDA margin in 2024, a five-year low, according to the SPI Benchmark Maturity Report via Deltek.

Smart plays for the week

If your firm runs on Domo, book a roadmap call with your account team this week and document every active integration before the Progress Software transition closes. Acquisitions routinely freeze or redirect product roadmaps; getting clarity now while you still have pre-acquisition leverage is worth more than waiting for an announcement.

B2B marketers running European campaigns should pilot ECN's ABM Matcher with a single target account list before committing to a full media buy, treating office DOOH as an incremental reach test against your existing digital ABM spend. ECN's new product is the first to bring account-based targeting to physical office screens in the UK, France, and Germany, opening a channel that has no auction history yet and is likely underpriced.

Construction and infrastructure operators should put a drone-plus-Procore workflow on the agenda for their next technology steering committee, treating the DroneDeploy acquisition as the signal that reality capture is now a standard expectation rather than an advanced capability. Procore's $845 million bet collapses the data handoff between site and office and will quickly become the baseline for how owners and general contractors expect project reporting to work.

Something to think about

As AI displaces tasks across industries, the sharpest operators are not asking 'what does AI replace?' They are asking 'what does AI return?' The answer is professional judgment, applied at higher volume. That reframe changes how you build teams and how you sell to them.

AI shouldn't replace physicists. It should give them time back., Nico Asperagus, CEO and Founder, TheraPanacea

As AI displaces tasks across industries, the sharpest operators are not asking 'what does AI replace?' They are asking 'what does AI return?' The answer is professional judgment, applied at higher volume. That reframe changes how you build teams and how you sell to them.

Teach me something: Reality Capture

Reality capture is the process of using drones, laser scanners, or cameras to create precise digital representations, point clouds, 3D models, or orthomosaics of a physical site. In construction, it replaces manual field measurements and paper-based progress reports with data that can be overlaid on design drawings to flag deviations in real time. Procore's acquisition of DroneDeploy is significant because it pulls reality capture out of a standalone workflow and connects it directly to budgets, schedules, and approvals, eliminating the lag between what is happening on site and what project leaders actually know.

Sources

Featured companies

The Early Scale

Part of this channel

The Early Scale

Five minutes of B2B intelligence. Every morning.

Visit the channel

Your experts belong here

Every story in MarketScale Business Services starts with a company putting its consultants, practice leads, and account teams on the record. Buyers are already reading this topic. The only question is whose experts they find.

Clients hire the firm whose thinking they have already read, which means fewer cold conversations for your partners.

Book DemoSee how it works15 minutes, straight to a calendar.

About the author

MarketScale Newsroom
MarketScale NewsroomEditorial Team, MarketScale

The MarketScale Newsroom reports on the companies, technologies, and trends shaping 16 B2B industries. It turns primary sources and expert commentary into clear, useful coverage for the people doing the work.

B2B Weekly

The week in Business Services, and sixteen other industries, every Monday.

Ten stories, one-line takes, five minutes. Free.

Business Services: are you visible to AI?

Before they reach out, Business Services buyers ask AI engines which vendors to trust. Explore how your experts, customers, and partners can become useful content for buyers and AI search.

Free Trial

You just read one Business Services expert. Your company is full of them.

This article was produced through MarketScale. The same platform turns your consultants, practice leads, and account teams into the articles, video, and social content Business Services buyers are searching for. Start a free trial and see it with your own people. For qualifying companies, no credit card, no demo required.

NPS +73 · 1,000+ creators · 38+ countries

What your free trial includes

Hands-on access to the MarketScale platform
Media requests to your crowd, remote recording, AI writing tools
No demo required. No credit card.
For qualifying companies. Company confirmation required.

More Business Services Insights

Remote work holds at a quarter of U.S. workdays, data cited in Kelly review show

Remote work holds at a quarter of U.S. workdays, data cited in Kelly review show

Remote work held near a quarter of U.S. paid workdays in 2026, and monthly telework stayed between 21.5% and 23% for a year. Executives still expect a full return to the office, but Kelly finds mandates raise attendance by less than they call for. The practical response is to plan by measure and by role: full-day counts for office space, part-day counts for meetings, and remote terms set by role family.

  • 01After years of tougher mandates, remote work still sits near a quarter of U.S. paid workdays, which makes it one of the steadiest numbers a workforce planner has.
  • 02Use full-day remote figures to size office space and part-day figures to plan meetings. The 35% of workers who did any work at home on a workday is a different population from the 26% of workdays done remotely.
  • 03FlexJobs found fully remote job postings rose 33% in Q3 2026 vs. Q2, the third straight quarter of growth, but results vary widely by employer and role.

Nov 7, 2026

The Early Scale: Federal Agencies Warn Cold Chain on Cyber Threats

The Early Scale: Federal Agencies Warn Cold Chain on Cyber Threats

Energy-as-a-service (EaaS) is effectively changing how businesses manage their energy costs. With EaaS, companies can gain more predictable expenses and align energy usage with sustainability goals, all without upfront capital expenditures. As an example, Dunkin' stores in San Antonio embraced this model, showing how it stabilizes expenditures and supports green energy transitions. This speaks to an emerging trend where businesses across various sectors are prioritizing sustainable and cost-effective energy solutions.

  • 01CISA, the FBI, USDA and other agencies urge cold chain operators to strengthen cybersecurity against rising threats.
  • 02Octopus Energy's smart-device customers show 50-60% participation in demand response programs, outpacing national averages.
  • 03Energy-as-a-service enables predictable expenses and sustainability alignment without capital expenditure, as demonstrated by Dunkin' locations.

Nov 7, 2026

Only 4% of US HR chiefs feel very prepared for AI-driven workforce change

Only 4% of US HR chiefs feel very prepared for AI-driven workforce change

Only 4% of US chief HR officers say they are very prepared for AI-driven workforce change, while PwC found worker access to training fell from 59% to 51%. The gap is in work design. Vistek, Sophos and JLL point to mapping workflows and pairing HR with IT before adding AI licences.

  • 01At Vistek, Reid spent six to 10 years mapping workflows before deciding where automation could add value.
  • 0277% of managers think employees are set up for AI success, but only 24% of individual contributors strongly agree, and Skillsoft says the gap can lead organizations to overestimate readiness.

Nov 6, 2026

Explore More Business Services Insights

Read more expert perspectives from across Business Services.

Browse Business Services Hub

About the Expert

MarketScale Newsroom
MarketScale Newsroom

Editorial Team

MarketScale

The MarketScale Newsroom reports on the companies, technologies, and trends shaping 16 B2B industries. It turns primary sources and expert commentary into clear, useful coverage for the people doing the work.

For B2B teams

Your experts could be publishing here

Stories like this one run on content MarketScale captures from real practitioners. See how your team's expertise becomes coverage in Business Services and beyond.

Book a Demo

Or call us. No forms required. We pick up. 214-945-2512