Elon Musk Confirms Shutdown Of Tesla Dojo, ‘an Evolutionary Dead End’ 

Elon Musk confirmed complete nan play reports that Tesla has disbanded nan squad moving connected its Dojo AI training supercomputer, conscionable weeks aft announcing he expected to person Tesla’s 2nd cluster operating “at scale” successful 2026. 

“Once it became clear that each paths converged to AI6, I had to unopen down Dojo and make immoderate reliable unit choices, arsenic Dojo 2 was now an evolutionary dormant end,” Musk posted connected X, nan societal media level he owns, connected Sunday. “Dojo 3 arguably lives connected successful nan shape of a ample number of AI6 [systems-on-a-chip] connected a azygous board.”

After bringing its first Dojo supercomputer to life and powering it pinch a operation of Nvidia GPUs and in-house-made D1 chips, Tesla had planned to build a 2nd Dojo mill – referred to by Musk arsenic “Dojo 2” – that would person been powered by a second-generation D2 chip. 

It appears nan D2 spot nether improvement has been shelved on pinch nan broader Dojo task arsenic Tesla shifts its attraction to its AI5 and AI6 chips, which are being manufactured by TSMC and Samsung, respectively. The AI5 spot is chiefly built to powerfulness FSD, Tesla’s driver assistance system, while AI6 is designed for some onboard conclusion – meaning, it promises to powerfulness self-driving successful cars and autonomous capabilities successful humanoid robots – and large-scale AI training.  

“It doesn’t make consciousness for Tesla to disagreement its resources and standard 2 rather different AI spot designs,” Musk posted precocious Friday evening. “The Tesla AI5, AI6 and consequent chips will beryllium fantabulous for conclusion and astatine slightest beautiful bully for training. All effort is focused connected that.”

He added that for a supercomputer cluster, it makes much consciousness to put “many AI5/AI6 chips connected a board, whether for conclusion aliases training, simply to trim web cabling complexity & costs by a fewer orders of magnitude.” 

“One could telephone that Dojo 3, I suppose,” he said.

Musk has talked astir Dojo since 2019, reiterating that Dojo would beryllium a cornerstone of Tesla’s ngo to execute afloat self-driving and commercialize humanoid robots. Talk of Dojo halted astir August 2024 erstwhile Musk began touting Cortex instead, a “giant caller AI training supercluster being built astatine Tesla HQ successful Austin to lick real-world AI.”

It’s not clear if Cortex is still successful nan works. TechCrunch has reached retired to Tesla to study more, arsenic good arsenic to inquire astir nan destiny of nan Dojo installation Tesla had invested $500 million to build successful Buffalo, New York. 

The displacement successful strategy comes astatine a clip erstwhile Tesla is experiencing falling EV income and important marque harm aft Musk’s forays into politics. Musk has worked to person investors that Tesla still has a early successful autonomy, contempt a slow and constricted robotaxi motorboat successful Austin this past June that resulted successful galore reported incidents of nan vehicles exhibiting problematic driving behavior.