Elon Musk confirmed over the weekend that Tesla disbanded a team working on the Dojo AI training supercomputer a few weeks after expecting Tesla’s second cluster to work on “large scale” in 2026.
“When it became clear that all the passes had converged to AI6, Dojo 2 became an evolutionary dead end, and we had to shut down Dojo and choose a tough HR,” Musk posted on social media platform X on Sunday. “Dojo 3 definitely lives on in the form of numerous AI6s [systems-on-a-chip] On a single board. ”
After bringing the first Dojo supercomputer to life and powering it with an Nvidia GPU and an in-house created D1 chip, Tesla had planned to build a second Dojo Factory, calling the second Dojo Factory “Dojo 2.”
As Tesla shifts its focus to the AI5 and AI6 chips manufactured by TSMC and Samsung, respectively, the D2 chips under development appear to be shelved along with a wider Dojo project. The AI5 chip is primarily built to power FSD, Tesla’s driver assistance system, while the AI6 is designed for onboard inference. This means that it promises autonomous driving of cars, the autonomous driving capabilities of humanoid robots, and massive AI training.
“It makes no sense for Tesla to split its resources and scale two completely different AI chip designs,” Musk posted Friday evening. “The Tesla AI5, AI6 and subsequent chips are excellent at reasoning and at least good for training. All efforts are focused on that.”
He added that in the case of supercomputer clusters it makes more sense to put “many AI5/AI6 chips on the board” simply to reduce the complexity and costs of network cables by orders of magnitude, whether inference or training.
“I think we can call it that Dojo 3,” he said.
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Musk has been talking about Dojo since 2019, reiterating that Dojo will achieve full autonomous driving and become the cornerstone of Tesla’s mission to commercialize humanoid robots. Dojo’s story stopped around August 2024, when Mask began promoting the cortex instead.
It is not clear whether the cortex is still in operation. TechCrunch contacted Tesla to learn more, asked about the fate of Dojo’s facility, and Tesla invested $500 million to build it in Buffalo, New York.
The change in strategy comes as Tesla is experiencing a decline in EV sales and serious brand damage after Musk has made its way into politics. Musk has been working to convince investors that Tesla still has a future of autonomy despite the slow and limited launch of Robotakshi in Austin this June.
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