Elon Musk — cheater at video games, Austin-based father of (at least) 14 children, and apparent supervisor to President Donald Trump — is getting millions of dollars more from the state of Texas, all while he slashes government spending.
A $17.3 million state grant will go toward Elon Musk’s SpaceX for the expansion of Starlink, a subsidiary and manufacturing facility in Bastrop, The Texas Newsroom reported. As Musk works to cut federal spending on some of our most vital government programs, his own companies are raking in billions from government contracts.
Gov. Greg Abbott’s Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund will help SpaceX grow its research and development in Bastrop, according to a press release from the Office of the Texas Governor on Wednesday. The governor’s office told The Texas Newsroom that only five grants have been given since its creation in 2023. The fund amounts to $698.3 million.
Musk’s SpaceX received the second most funding behind Silicon Labs in Austin, which got $23 million through the program, according to The Texas Newsroom. Other recipients include IntelliEPI in Allen, Dongjin Semichem Texas in Killeen, and KoMiCo in Round Rock.
SpaceX’s manufacturing site is in rural Bastrop County, around 45 minutes east of Austin, along with Musk-owned social media company X and infrastructure firm The Boring Company, according to The Texas Newsroom. SpaceX’s Bastrop location currently stands at 700,000 square feet, but it plans to expand by one million square feet over the next three years, per Abbott’s announcement on Wednesday. A 2024 company progress report previously noted the facility would double in size this year, according to The Texas Newsroom.
Read more at The Texas Newsroom.
