Reportedly Sam Altman’s plan for fabs from last winter finally has some more solid numbers…
$7 trillion for 36 fabs.
That’s nearly $200 billion per fab. Considering Intel’s fabs are now costing about $15 billion each, obviously Sam Altman’s plans were beyond elaborate and included extra costs.
Ultimately to build that many fabs you’d need to stimulate quite an ecosystem. You’d need skilled construction companies / construction workers, you’d need a whole range of fab employees trained up, you’d need to find appropriate sites for the fabs which is not as easy as you’d think, you’d need a whole range of inputs which would require significant investment across a whole range of industries, you’d need political goodwill along with the backing of a nation or consortium of nations, and you’d need to somehow increase the production of ASML’s machines which is easier said than done.
It’s quite a list of things you’d have to get done to make Sam Altman’s idea work.
But hey, he’s got vision!