TESLA
Tesla’s AI plot twist nobody saw coming
Elon Musk has confirmed that Tesla has shut down the team working on its Dojo AI training supercomputer, just weeks after saying a second Dojo cluster would be running “at scale” by 2026.
Musk explained that “all paths converged to AI6,” making Dojo 2 an “evolutionary dead end.”
Instead, Tesla is putting its efforts into two chips: AI5, made by TSMC, and AI6, made by Samsung.
AI5 is built for Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system, while AI6 will handle both autonomous driving and humanoid robots, and has the power for large-scale AI training too.
Rather than splitting resources, Tesla plans to place multiple AI5/AI6 chips on a single board, which Musk says will massively cut cabling complexity and costs.
He even joked this could be considered “Dojo 3.”
Dojo was first unveiled in 2019 as a key piece of Tesla’s autonomy ambitions.
But after August 2024, Musk shifted attention to “Cortex”, a huge new AI training supercluster.
Here’s what you should know:
Dojo team disbanded: Focus now on AI5/AI6 chips.
Chip strategy: AI5 for FSD, AI6 for robots, self-driving, and AI training.
Cortex unclear: No update on the Buffalo site.
It’s not clear if Cortex is still in development, and Tesla hasn’t said what will happen to the $500m Dojo facility in Buffalo, New York.
The move comes as Tesla deals with falling EV sales and brand challenges, while still trying to convince investors of its autonomy plans, including June’s limited robotaxi launch in Austin, which faced multiple driving incident reports.
From $500m supercomputer to the recycle bin, speedrun world record.