  We present the current status of the apeNEXT project. Aim of this project is
the development of the next generation of APE machines which will provide
multi-teraflop computing power. Like previous machines, apeNEXT is based on a
custom designed processor, which is specifically optimized for simulating QCD.
We discuss the machine design, report on benchmarks, and give an overview on
the status of the software development.
