“Either we build Terafab, or we won’t have chips available.” This is the blunt supply bottleneck that Elon Musk pointed out in his interview with Reuters. TSMC’s chips are already sold out, and Samsung has also committed its supply. The existing supply chain cannot expand quickly enough to meet the demands of his companies in artificial intelligence, robotics, and aerospace. So he began looking for an alternative supplier—one with available capacity, technical expertise, and no waiting list.
Similarly, Pan Am’s Juan Trippe faced the exact same problem of seat shortages in the mid-1960s. At the time, aircraft carrying capacity was insufficient to make mass air travel possible at a reasonable price. Boeing was bleeding money trying to keep up with the Concorde, deeply entangled in the supersonic speed race. Trippe didn’t ask for the fastest plane; he asked for one that could carry as many people as possible to the destinations they dreamed of but could not yet afford.