SpaceX building packaging plant

SpaceX has started installing equipment at a Bastrop, Texas, plant that is meant to package Starlink radio chips, with production targeted for late 2026. (reuters.com) Chip packaging is the step after a chip is manufactured: the bare silicon is mounted, wired, protected, and connected so it can work inside a product. SpaceX’s Bastrop site is being built for “advanced packaging,” a more complex version used to squeeze more performance into smaller hardware. (lamresearch.com) (texas.gov) Texas put public money behind the project in March 2025, when Governor Greg Abbott announced a $17.3 million Semiconductor Innovation Fund grant for SpaceX’s Bastrop expansion. The state said the project would create more than 400 jobs and involve more than $280 million in capital investment. (texas.gov) Reuters reported on April 10, 2026, that the Bastrop plant will package radio-frequency chips used in Starlink products and that one source described the schedule as delayed but still aimed at a late-2026 start. Reuters also said the information was not public and that the sources were not named. (reuters.com) Starlink is no side project inside SpaceX. In its 2025 progress report, Starlink said it added more than 4.6 million active customers in 2025, expanded to 35 additional markets, and completed deployment of a first-generation direct-to-cell constellation with more than 650 satellites. (starlink.com) That scale helps explain why SpaceX wants more control over chip packaging. Radio-frequency chips handle the sending and receiving of wireless signals, which makes them central to satellite terminals and satellite-to-phone links. (lamresearch.com) (t-mobile.com) Bastrop is already one of SpaceX’s main manufacturing hubs. SpaceX said in a March 2025 factory update that the site was producing 15,000 Starlink kits a day, and PCMag reported the same figure from the company’s video tour. (pcmag.com) The contested part of this story is the timing after installation. Posts on X cited by the original thread say low yields could push mass production into mid-2027 and keep SpaceX reliant on Taiwan-based partners including Innolux, while naming suppliers such as STMicroelectronics and GlobalFoundries, but SpaceX has not publicly confirmed those claims. (x.com 1) (x.com 2) (x.com 3) Innolux is a real player in the packaging field that those posts reference. TrendForce reported in March 2025 that Innolux was developing large panel-level packaging substrates and was preparing trial production, which matches the kind of manufacturing capacity industry watchers are discussing around SpaceX’s supply chain. (trendforce.com) For now, the hard facts are narrower than the speculation: SpaceX is fitting out a Bastrop packaging plant, Texas has tied $17.3 million in incentives to a $280 million expansion, and Reuters’ latest reporting says the company is still aiming to start production by the end of 2026. (texas.gov) (reuters.com)