Former Wall Street fund manager Larry Benedict believes Elon Musk is preparing his most audacious move yet.
Larry calls the plan “Project TitanX” and he’s identified the one stock that could make a big move as it unfolds.
The Teaser
Elon’s plan begins with building a factory large enough to cover Central Park, nearly three times over.
The first phase alone costs more than $16 billion, with the total cost estimated to be north of $119 billion.
Larry Benedict has had a 40+ year career as a trader, fund manager, and now, an investment newsletter provocateur. We have previously reviewed his “Skim Codes” Trading Strategy and #1 Retirement Play in U.S. Energy teasers.
The freakishly large megafactory Larry calls “Project TitanX” is the Terafab facility in Austin, Texas.
It’s specs are absolutely ridiculous, more than 100 million square feet, at least 2-3 times bigger than New York’s Central Park, and the largest building on earth when completed.
Terafab is a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX, and Intel, with construction kicking off this past spring, and no opening date set as of press time. Safe to say, it will take at least a couple of years to complete.
When and if the project gets done, the fab will produce proprietary semiconductor chips for Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) vehicles, Optimus robots, and more.
Nvidia’s CEO and honeypot victim Jensen Huang calls Elon’s plan “extremely hard” to pull off.
That’s because it takes many different machines, materials, and critical components to pull off a self-contained semiconductor fab.
Right now, Tesla relies on other companies for these essential parts, with Terafab representing Elon’s long-term plan to bring it all in-house under his control. As much as $119 billion is being spent on this effort and one company that Wall Street has written off could hold the key.
The Pitch
It’s name and how to trade it are reserved for members of Larry’s One Ticker Trader service.
A one-year membership to One Ticker Trader normally costs $499, but for a limited time, Larry is shaving 96% off the regular price and offering the first year for only $19.
Getting Ahead of Elon’s Next Move
Despite everything he’s achieved, this is Elon Musk’s most ambitious plan ever.
A bold claim considering Elon is the guy who made reusable rockets possible before NASA.
Larry is basing it on the fact that he’s “never seen one man undertake a project with the potential to move this much money,” referring to Terafab’s total estimated cost of $119 billion.
Tesla and SpaceX’s portions represent their single largest capex items and when twelve figures move, every supplier, every breakthrough or setback, could create new winners and losers on a scale that’s bigger than anything we’ve seen before.
Thus, whether Terafab ultimately comes online and creates a steady supply of chips for the growing stable of businesses under Musk’s control or fails spectacularly. What matters is that the capital flows into the project.
It’s the classic follow the money and you can get piece of the pie too trope.
However, Larry’s thesis does have some precedence, as we have already seen what can happen to companies sitting in the path of Elon’s spending.
Shortly after SpaceX started ordering solid-state power amplifier units for satellite communications from a little-known supplier by the name of Filtronic in 2024, which was recently teased again, it’s stock jumped more than 1,000%.
Go back even further to the time Tesla announced that it had moved $1.5 billion of its money into Bitcoin.
When the news broke, that single move added $100 billion to Bitcoin’s market value in a matter of hours.
The point is Elon, and billions of dollars in capital, can and do move markets.
Now that Terafab construction has broken ground, Larry has pinpointed an overlooked ticker that could be first in line to benefit from Tesla and SpaceX’s patronage.
Revealing Larry Benedict’s “Project TitanX” Stock Pick
The chain reaction created by Elon trying to take control of the chips his empire needs.
It’s a good way to sum up the opportunity, with Larry saying his first pick is “a company that can help Terafab make better chips, faster.”
This is subsequently revealed to us in the teaser as Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC). Terafab’s joint venture partner that we highlighted in the first part of the review.
The thinking is that Intel’s technology and decades of advanced chipmaking experience mean Terafab won’t be trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to semi production.
However, we’re not done.
Larry says one winning trade is great. But “stacking multiple profitable trades is how you build real wealth.”
To this end, Larry gives us absolutely nothing, simply stating that “the second recommendation is to use One Ticker Trading (trade options of a single stock) to go after all the opportunities that follow.”
This makes it sound like even he doesn’t know what the second recommendation is. Something that is confirmed only moments later:
“As Elon’s plan unfolds, I’ll look for the next move.”
Larry’s own confusion notwithstanding, Terafab can perhaps still be a profit catalyst.
A Fast Payday from “Project TitanX?”
The most epic chip-building effort ever.
This is how Terafab is described on it’s own website.
But surely more than short-term profits can be made from such a long-term project.
Indeed, Intel barely scratches the surface of the massive vendor procurement search now underway. Everything from construction materials, water systems, specialty gases, foundry equipment, process chemicals, and more will be needed to get Terafab production ready.
Although no suppliers have formally been announced as yet, some names are either in confirmed talks or have already received a quote request:
- ASML (Nasdaq: ASML)*, for Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, which only it makes.
- TSMC (NYSE: TSM), with Musk confirming discussions.
- Micron (Nasdaq: MU)*, which is already a High Bandwith Memory (HBM) supplier to Tesla.
- Applied Materials (Nasdaq: AMAT).
- Lam Research (Nasdaq: LRCX).
Several Japanese and Korean manufacturers such as Hanmi Semiconductor and Samsung Electronics round out the list.
All of these names, including Intel, are tied at the hip to the AI trade and have run up considerably over the past year.
As a result, valuations look a bit stretched across the board, with price/earnings multiples of most in the 30s. But if the pullback that started this past summer continues, it could create an opening for us to get in on some quality names and the Terafab trade, right as construction ramps up over the next two years.
However, with the exception of Hanmi Semi, at a market cap of around $13 billion USD, all of the supplier names are megacaps, with market values in the hundreds of billions. The kind of businesses whose multibagger days are already well behind them.
Of course, the biggest beneficiaries could end up being Tesla and SpaceX due to the vertical integration Terafab will bring. But both already trade at nosebleed multiples of sales and earnings.
Apart from unspecified options trades, there’s no fast money to be made from “Project TitanX.”
Quick Recap & Conclusion
- Former Wall Street fund manager Larry Benedict believes something called “Project TitanX” is Elon Musk’s most audacious move yet, and one stock could make a big move as it unfolds.
- “Project TitanX” is the code name assigned to Tesla and SpaceX’s upcoming Terafab semiconductor manufacturing facility and one company holds the key to it.
- It’s name and the trade setup is only revealed to members of Larry’s One Ticker Trader service, which costs $499 per year, but for a limited time, it’s available for only $19.
- Larry did us a solid and revealed its name near the end of the teaser. It’s Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC).
- Intel, other prospective Terafab suppliers, Tesla, and SpaceX all trade at healthy premiums, making them watchlist additions at best, rather than screaming short-term buys.
Will Terafab give Tesla and SpaceX a bigger moat? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
*The author owns shares in ASML (Nasdaq: ASML) and Micron (Nasdaq: MU).