Elon Musk is building the world's largest chip factory in Texas, a bold bet for Tesla and SpaceX that industry veterans think could repeat Intel's costly mistakes.

• SpaceX and Tesla plan a giant chip plant near Houston, employing at least 3,000 people and costing up to $119 billion across four build-out stages.
• The plant would make, package and test logic and memory chips under one roof, feeding Tesla's Optimus robots, self-driving cars and SpaceX's space data centers.
• Musk says it will be the biggest building on Earth — five times the size of the current record-holder in Chengdu.
• Tesla has no chip-making history, so it teamed up with Intel, which is trying to grow its own contract chip business as part of a turnaround.
• Industry experts are skeptical: designing and making your own chips in-house is exactly the model that broke Intel.

Outlook: Texas is already handing out incentives and hiring has started, but the real test is whether Musk can fund and staff a 2-nanometer plant without repeating Intel's losses.