Tesla has leased a 682,000-square-foot speculative industrial building in the Austin Hills Commerce Center, expanding Elon Musk’s already sprawling Central Texas real estate footprint.
The company is set to occupy the second phase of the development at 11801 Decker Lake Road, which is scheduled for completion in January 2027. What Tesla plans to do with the space is still unknown.
Another piece of Musk’s Texas land grab
The building is being developed by Sansone Group and Principal Asset Management, according to reporting from the Austin Business Journal. The full Austin Hills Commerce Center will span 1.4 million square feet once complete.
The lease adds to a real estate empire that has quietly become one of the largest private footprints in Central Texas. The world’s richest man now controls 2.2 million square feet of leased space around Austin and more than 10 million square feet that he owns and built, spread across his web of companies.
That portfolio already includes Tesla’s Gigafactory Texas, which spans over 10 million square feet, a reported 112,000-square-foot sublease at the Seaholm Power Plant downtown for xAI, and production facilities under construction near the Gigafactory. Musk’s companies now stretch across the entire Austin suburban belt, from Taylor in the north to Kyle in the south, plus SpaceX’s Starbase down in Cameron County.
Speculative building, unclear purpose
The “speculative” label matters here. The building wasn’t pre-leased to a specific tenant with a specific use — it was built on the bet that demand would show up. Tesla stepping in to take phase two confirms just how hungry Musk’s companies are for industrial space in the region.
The development also highlights a broader Austin trend. According to the Austin Business Journal, there are at least a dozen speculative buildings spanning more than 400,000 square feet in various stages of development in the area, from finished to early planning.
Tesla hasn’t said whether the space will be used for vehicle logistics, parts storage, service operations, energy products, or something tied to its newer bets. The company runs its Model Y and Cybertruck production out of Giga Texas, and it has been aggressively expanding supporting operations in the region as it leans harder into its robotaxi program in Austin.
The bigger Texas buildout
The lease lands in the middle of Musk’s most ambitious Texas expansion yet. In March, Tesla and SpaceX announced Terafab, a $20-25 billion chip fabrication venture planned for the North Campus of Giga Texas, with an initial 2-million-square-foot R&D facility. SpaceX has since estimated the full project could cost as much as $119 billion across all phases.
Tesla is also building out its Optimus robot production footprint at the same North Campus, with a facility that construction trackers say could stretch nearly the full length of the existing Giga Texas main building.
Put together, Musk is assembling a concentration of manufacturing, R&D, and logistics capacity in Central Texas that few companies on Earth can match — and this 682,000-square-foot warehouse is one more brick in that wall.
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