Ivanka Trump says her fashion brand was earning $800,000,000 a year with a new baby on her hip, then her dad called and said “I need you”
“My fashion brand were doing over $800 million in sales annually. I was running all real estate acquisitions and development for the Trump Organization”
“I was building the Old Post Office at the same time as I was building Trump Doral, which is 800 acres here in Miami”
“I had three young children, very young in one case. My son Theo was literally on my hip, he was 6 months old”
“And then my father won the presidency. And he said, ‘I need you.’ He had never spent a night in Washington until his first night in the White House. And he didn’t know anyone…”
“He trusted my ability and Jared’s ability… and he asked us to go. This was about a week and a half after he won”
“A complete change in trajectory of our whole lives”
Vertical Recursive Speed
The "recursive loop" is a rapid, continuous cycle of hardware iteration made possible by vertically integrating the entire semiconductor manufacturing process under one roof at the Advanced Technology Fab in Austin.
Here is how this loop functions to test new chip physics:
All-in-One Consolidation: Unlike the traditional semiconductor industry, which relies on a fragmented global supply chain that ships wafers across the world for different production stages, this facility houses everything needed to build a chip in a single building.
This includes chip design, lithography mask production, wet chemical etching, memory integration, advanced packaging, and diagnostic testing.
The Iteration Cycle: Because every tool is co-located, engineers can create a lithography mask, manufacture a chip, test it for flaws, revise the mask design, and immediately print a new batch.
This allows the team to complete a full evaluation cycle in a matter of days, or even overnight, rather than waiting weeks or months.
Experimenting with "New Physics": This unprecedented speed allows engineers to safely take risks, test "wild and crazy things," and push the fundamental limits of computing physics.
If they want to test a new physical concept, they can instantly alter variables—such as adjusting photomask designs or changing chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP) profiles—and immediately validate whether those new physics actually work in a real-world production environment.
Ultimately, Elon Musk believes that having this tight, closed-loop feedback system will make their ability to improve chip designs an order of magnitude faster than anything else in the world.