Tesla Shuts Down Dojo Supercomputer Project, Shifts Focus to AI6 Chip

Tesla shuts down Dojo, the AI training supercomputer that Musk said would be key to full self-driving | TechCrunch

Tesla is breaking up the team behind its Dojo supercomputer, ending the automaker's play at developing in-house chips for driverless technology, according to Bloomberg. Dojo's lead, Peter Bannon, is leaving the company, and the remaining team members will be reassigned to other data center and compute projects within Tesla, per Bloomberg's reporting which cited anonymous sources. The disbanding of Tesla's Dojo efforts follows the departure of around 20 workers, who left the automaker to start their own AI company called DensityAI. The new startup is reportedly coming out of stealth soon and is building chips, hardware, and software that will power data centers for AI that are used in robotics, by AI agents, and in automotive applications. DensityAI was founded by former Dojo head Ganesh Venkataramanan and ex-Tesla employees Bill Chang and Ben Floering. It also comes at a crucial time for Tesla. CEO Elon Musk has pushed to get shareholders to view Tesla as an AI and robotics company, despite a limited robotaxi launch in Austin this past June that featured Model Y vehicles with a human in the front passenger seat and resulted in a number of reported incidents of the vehicles exhibiting problematic driving behavior. Tesla's decision to shut down Dojo, which Musk has been talking about since 2019, is a major shift in strategy. CEO Elon Musk has said that Dojo would be the cornerstone of Tesla's AI ambitions and its goal to reach full self-driving due to its ability to "process truly vast amounts of video data." He talked about Dojo, albeit briefly, as recently as the company's second-quarter earnings call. In 2023, Morgan Stanley predicted Dojo could add $500 billion to the company's market value by unlocking new revenue streams in the form of robotaxis and software services. Just last year, Musk noted that Tesla's AI team would "double down" on Dojo in the lead-up to Tesla's robotaxi reveal, which happened in October. But talk about Dojo halted around August 2024, when Musk began touting Cortex instead, Tesla's "giant new AI training supercluster being built at Tesla HQ in Austin to solve real-world AI." The Dojo project was one part supercomputer, one part in-house chip-making. Tesla unveiled its D1 chip when it formally announced Dojo at its first AI Day in 2021. Venkataramanan presented the chip, which Tesla said would be used alongside Nvidia's GPU to power the Dojo supercomputer. The automaker also said it was working on a next-gen D2 chip that would solve any information flow bottlenecks of its predecessor. Sources told Bloomberg that now Tesla plans to increase its reliance on Nvidia, as well as other external tech partners like AMD for compute and Samsung for chip manufacturing. Tesla last month signed a $16.5 billion deal with Samsung to make its AI6 inference chips, a chip design that promises to scale from powering FSD and Tesla's Optimus humanoid robots all the way to high-performance AI training in data centers. During Tesla's second-quarter earnings call, Musk hinted at potential redundancies. "Thinking about Dojo 3 and the AI6 inference chip, it seems like intuitively, we want to try to find convergence there, where it's basically the same chip," Musk said. The news comes as Tesla's board offers Musk a $29 billion pay package to keep him at Tesla and help push the company's AI efforts forward, rather than getting too sidetracked by his other companies, including the more pure-play AI startup xAI. TechCrunch has reached out to Tesla for more information.

Elon Musk confirms shutdown of Tesla Dojo, 'an evolutionary dead end' | TechCrunch

Elon Musk confirmed over the weekend reports that Tesla has disbanded the team working on its Dojo AI training supercomputer, just weeks after announcing he expected to have Tesla's second cluster operating "at scale" in 2026. "Once it became clear that all paths converged to AI6, I had to shut down Dojo and make some tough personnel choices, as Dojo 2 was now an evolutionary dead end," Musk posted on X, the social media platform he owns, on Sunday. "Dojo 3 arguably lives on in the form of a large number of AI6 [systems-on-a-chip] on a single board." After bringing its first Dojo supercomputer to life and powering it with a mix of Nvidia GPUs and in-house-made D1 chips, Tesla had planned to build a second Dojo factory - referred to by Musk as "Dojo 2" - that would have been powered by a second-generation D2 chip. It appears the D2 chip under development has been shelved along with the broader Dojo project as Tesla shifts its focus to its AI5 and AI6 chips, which are being manufactured by TSMC and Samsung, respectively. The AI5 chip is primarily built to power FSD, Tesla's driver assistance system, while AI6 is designed for both onboard inference - meaning, it promises to power self-driving in cars and autonomous capabilities in humanoid robots - and large-scale AI training. "It doesn't make sense for Tesla to divide its resources and scale two quite different AI chip designs," Musk posted late Friday evening. "The Tesla AI5, AI6 and subsequent chips will be excellent for inference and at least pretty good for training. All effort is focused on that." He added that for a supercomputer cluster, it makes more sense to put "many AI5/AI6 chips on a board, whether for inference or training, simply to reduce network cabling complexity & cost by a few orders of magnitude." "One could call that Dojo 3, I suppose," he said. Musk has talked about Dojo since 2019, reiterating that Dojo would be a cornerstone of Tesla's mission to achieve full self-driving and commercialize humanoid robots. Talk of Dojo halted around August 2024 when Musk began touting Cortex instead, a "giant new AI training supercluster being built at Tesla HQ in Austin to solve real-world AI." It's not clear if Cortex is still in the works. TechCrunch has reached out to Tesla to learn more, as well as to inquire about the fate of the Dojo facility Tesla had invested $500 million to build in Buffalo, New York. The shift in strategy comes at a time when Tesla is experiencing falling EV sales and significant brand damage after Musk's forays into politics. Musk has worked to convince investors that Tesla still has a future in autonomy, despite a slow and limited robotaxi launch in Austin this past June that resulted in numerous reported incidents of the vehicles exhibiting problematic driving behavior.

Tesla shuts down the team behind its Dojo supercomputer

Tesla is dissolving the team that was developing its Dojo supercomputer, according to Bloomberg. The change, which reportedly includes the departure of Dojo head Peter Bannon, marks a notable shift away from using in-house technology to train the AI models powering Tesla's self-driving features and its Optimus humanoid robot. Tesla CEO Elon Musk first introduced Dojo in 2019, which he described as a "super powerful training computer" capable of processing heaps of vehicle video data that it uses to train AI chips. Bloomberg says Tesla now plans to partner with Nvidia and AMD for compute, while turning to Samsung for chip manufacturing. Last month, Musk announced that Tesla struck a $16.5 billion deal with Samsung to develop the automaker's next-generation AI6 chip. In response to Bloomberg's reporting, Musk wrote on X that the "Tesla AI5, AI6 and subsequent chips will be excellent for inference and at least pretty good for training. All effort is focused on that." The team's disbandment comes at a pivotal time for Tesla, which has just rolled out its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, with a safety monitor in the passenger seat. Its subsequent launch in San Francisco puts a human at the wheel, a move that contradicts Musk's promise of having "no one in the car." Tesla's Dojo team already took a big hit earlier this month, when Bloomberg reported that around 20 members left the company to start DensityAI, a startup "focused on data center services for industries from automotive to robotics." The automaker shifted its remaining Dojo employees to other areas of the company, according to Bloomberg.

Tesla scraps custom Dojo wafer-level processor initiative, dismantles team -- Musk to lean on Nvidia and AMD more

Tesla's custom Dojo wafer-level processor has always been an ambitious and promising hardware project, but despite early success with the company's bespoke chip, Musk has still used Nvidia GPUs in addition to Dojo. Today, this reportedly comes to an end as Tesla has decided to dismantle its Dojo supercomputer program, reassign its remaining staff to other computing projects, and turn more heavily to outside technology providers like AMD or Nvidia, according to Bloomberg. Tesla has not formally confirmed the Dojo shutdown. Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla, has recently ordered the Dojo effort to be entirely wound down, according to the report. As a result, Peter Bannon, the head of the Dojo project at Tesla, is reportedly set to leave the company. In fact, about 20 members of the team have left to join DensityAI, a startup created by former Tesla executives, in recent weeks, according to Bloomberg. Those who remain will be moved to other internal data centers and computing roles within Tesla, if the information is accurate. The company reportedly plans to deepen its partnerships with major suppliers of AI processors for data centers: Nvidia will keep supplying GPUs to Tesla, but Tesla will increase reliance on AMD. TSMC will produce the AI5 processor for next-generation Tesla vehicles starting in 2025, whereas Samsung Foundry will produce its successor, the AI6 processors, sometime towards the end of the decade. Tesla officially started its Dojo supercomputer project in 2021 and attempted to build wafer-scale processors for AI training. The company planned to use its own cluster built on its own proprietary hardware to train AI powering the full self-driving (FSD) capability of its cars and the Optimus humanoid robot. However, Tesla never completely relied on Dojo supercomputers and used third-party hardware as well. "We are pursuing the dual path of Nvidia and Dojo," Musk said at an earnings call in 2023. "But I would think of Dojo as a long shot. It is a long shot worth taking because the payoff is potentially very high." However, Dojo had its own limitations when it came to memory capacity, and servers based on a wafer-scale processor were hard to produce as they used a lot of proprietary components. In fact, the roll-out of Dojo 2 hardware has been pretty slow, and the company expected to have a cluster equivalent to 100,000 of Nvidia's H100 GPUs up and running in 2026. Essentially, this meant that Tesla would run a cluster equivalent to xAI's Colossus in Fall 2024, but two years later. Recently, Musk implied that he would like Tesla cars' hardware and Dojo supercomputer hardware to run on the same architecture. "I think about Dojo 3 and the AI6 as the first [converged architecture designs]," Musk said in a July 23 earnings call (via Investing.com). "It seems like intuitively, we want to try to find convergence there where it is basically the same chip that is used where we use, say, two of them in a car or an Optimus and maybe a larger number on a on a [server] board, a kind of 5 - 12 twelve on a board or something like that. [...] That sort of seems like intuitively the sensible way to go." If Tesla follows Musk's direction, it will continue developing its own hardware for both edge devices and data centers, this time based on a converged architecture that avoids relying on exotic design decisions and proprietary components. Then again, this has not been formally confirmed yet.

Tesla Unwinds Dojo Supercomputer Team Following Exec Exodus

Just as the success of its self-driving AI looks increasingly integral to Tesla's future, the company is dissolving the team behind its Dojo supercomputer -- an in-house chip development and supercomputer project that was meant to process vast amounts of the company's vehicle video data to train its AI. The project's lead, Pete Bannon, who joined from Apple in 2016, will leave the company. According to Bloomberg, which first reported the news, Tesla will now lean on technology from third-party chipmakers such as Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) for its compute hardware, and Samsung Electronics for chip manufacturing. Employees from the Dojo team are set to be reassigned to other data center and compute projects within the company. CEO Elon Musk had certainly talked a big game when it came to the potential of the project, even saying in a 2024 earnings call he saw "a path to being competitive with Nvidia with Dojo," which is a multi-trillion-dollar company, though he also called it a "long shot" in another call with investors. In a post on X earlier this week, Musk explained that: "It doesn't make sense for Tesla to divide its resources and scale two quite different AI chip designs." Musk added that "all effort" would be focused on its "AI5, AI6 and subsequent chips." The move follows a wave of executive departures from the project in recent months. Bloomberg reported in August that roughly 20 former Dojo team members, including senior-level staff, have joined AI startup DensityAI. The new firm will work on chips, hardware, and software for AI data centers used in robotics, AI agents, and automotive applications. DensityAI was founded by Ganesh Venkataramanan, the former head of the Dojo team. Tesla has already signed deals to outsource parts of its AI work. In July, it reached an agreement worth up to $16.5 billion with Samsung to manufacture its next-generation AI6 chip, meant to power everything from its driver-assistance system, its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) feature, to the Optimus humanoid robot, as well as AI training in its data centers.

Tesla Disbands Dojo Supercomputer Team in Blow to AI Effort

Tesla Inc. is disbanding its Dojo supercomputer team and its leader will depart the company, according to people familiar with the matter, upending the automaker's effort to develop in-house chips for driverless technology. Peter Bannon, who was heading up Dojo, is leaving and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has ordered the effort to be shut down, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. The team has lost about 20 workers recently to newly formed DensityAI, and remaining Dojo workers are being reassigned to other data center and compute projects within Tesla, the people said.

Tesla disbands Dojo supercomputer team, Bloomberg News reports

Aug 7 (Reuters) - Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab is disbanding its Dojo supercomputer team and its leader, Peter Bannon, will depart the company, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The Dojo supercomputer was designed to process vast amounts of data and video from Tesla cars to train the automaker's autonomous-driving software. The team lost about 20 workers recently to newly formed DensityAI, and the remaining Dojo workers are being reassigned to other data center and compute projects within Tesla, the report said. The automaker also plans to increase its reliance on external technology partners such as Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O), opens new tab for compute, and Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), opens new tab for chip manufacturing, as per the report. Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Tesla, Nvidia, AMD and Samsung did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. Reporting by Preetika Parashuraman in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Artificial Intelligence * ADAS, AV & Safety * Software-Defined Vehicle * Sustainable & EV Supply Chain

Tesla shuts down Dojo supercomputer team, reassigns workers amid strategic AI shift, Bloomberg News reports

Aug 7 (Reuters) - Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab CEO Elon Musk has ordered to shut down its Dojo supercomputer team, with team leader Peter Bannon departing the company, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The Dojo supercomputer was designed to process vast amounts of data and video from Tesla EVs to train the automaker's autonomous-driving software. The team recently lost about 20 workers to newly formed DensityAI, and the remaining Dojo workers are being reassigned to other data center and compute projects within Tesla, the report said. Reuters could not independently verify the report. Over the past year, Tesla, amid a company-wide restructuring, experienced multiple executive departures and thousands of job cuts. Several key Tesla executives, including leaders in robotics, battery development, and public policy, have recently departed. Tesla has redirected its focus to AI-driven self-driving technology and robotics, with CEO Elon Musk pursuing an integration strategy across his business empire. In March, xAI acquired the social media platform X for $33 billion to bolster its chatbot training capabilities, while Tesla integrated the Grok chatbot into its vehicles. In July, Musk dismissed the possibility of a merger between Tesla and xAI, but announced plans for a shareholder vote to consider Tesla's investment in the AI startup. The automaker also plans to increase its reliance on external technology partners such as Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O), opens new tab for compute, and Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), opens new tab for chip manufacturing, as per Bloomberg. Tesla, Nvidia, AMD and Samsung did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. Last month, Samsung secured a $16.5 billion deal to supply AI chips to Tesla, expected to power self-driving cars, humanoid robots and data centers. The deal is unlikely to resolve Tesla's immediate challenges, such as declining EV sales and efforts to scale its fledgling robotaxi service. Reporting by Preetika Parashuraman and Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Artificial Intelligence * ADAS, AV & Safety * Software-Defined Vehicle * Sustainable & EV Supply Chain

Tesla shuts down Dojo supercomputer team, reassigns workers amid AI shift, Bloomberg News reports

Aug 7 (Reuters) - Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab CEO Elon Musk has ordered to shut down its Dojo supercomputer team, with team leader Peter Bannon departing the company, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The Dojo supercomputer was designed around custom training chips to process vast amounts of data and video from Tesla EVs to train the automaker's autonomous-driving software. Tesla did not reply to a Reuters request for comment. CEO Elon Musk said on X that it didn't make sense for Tesla to divide its resources and scale two different AI chips. Over the past year, Tesla, amid a company-wide restructuring, has seen multiple executive departures and thousands of job cuts. The company has redirected its focus to AI-driven self-driving technology and robotics, with CEO Elon Musk pursuing an integration strategy across his business empire. In March, xAI acquired the social media platform X for $33 billion to bolster its chatbot training capabilities, while Tesla integrated the Grok chatbot into its vehicles. The automaker also plans to increase its reliance on external technology partners such as Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O), opens new tab for compute, and Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), opens new tab for chip manufacturing, as per the Bloomberg report. Last month, Samsung secured a $16.5 billion deal to supply AI chips to Tesla, expected to power self-driving cars, humanoid robots and data centers. Tesla CEO Elon Musk earlier said that Samsung's new chip factory in Taylor, Texas would make Tesla's next-generation AI6 chip. While no timeline was provided for AI6 chip production, Musk has previously said that next-generation AI5 chips will be produced at the end of 2026, suggesting AI6 would follow. "The Tesla AI5, AI6 and subsequent chips will be excellent for inference and at least pretty good for training. All effort is focused on that", Musk said in an X post late Thursday. Musk also said that in a supercomputer cluster, it would make sense to put many AI5/AI6 chips. "One could call that Dojo 3, I suppose", he said. The Dojo team recently lost about 20 workers to newly formed DensityAI, and the remaining workers are being reassigned to other data center and compute projects within Tesla, the Bloomberg report said. Nvidia declined to comment on the Bloomberg report, while AMD and Samsung did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. Reporting by Preetika Parashuraman, Mrinmay Dey and Chandni Shah in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona and Mrigank Dhaniwala Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Artificial Intelligence * ADAS, AV & Safety * Software-Defined Vehicle * Sustainable & EV Supply Chain

Tesla to streamline its AI chip design work, Musk says

Aug 8 (Reuters) - Tesla will streamline its AI chip research to focus on its development of inference chips used to run AI models and make real-time decisions, CEO Elon Musk said, after a media report he had ordered the closure of the in-house Dojo supercomputer team. Bloomberg News on Thursday cited people familiar with the matter as saying Musk had ordered the Dojo team to be disbanded, with team leader Peter Bannon departing the company. Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab did not reply to a Reuters request for comment. The Dojo supercomputer was designed around custom training chips to process vast amounts of data and video from Tesla EVs to train the automaker's autonomous-driving software. "It doesn't make sense for Tesla to divide its resources and scale two quite different AI chip designs," Musk said in an X post late on Thursday. "The Tesla AI5, AI6 and subsequent chips will be excellent for inference and at least pretty good for training. All effort is focused on that," he said, without directly mentioning Dojo. Tesla has been undergoing a wide-ranging restructuring over the past year, with its share price slumping as sales of its EVs were hit by rising competition and a backlash by European consumers in particular against Musk's political views. The company has seen multiple executive departures and cut thousands of jobs, and redirected its focus to AI-driven self-driving technology and robotics, with Musk pursuing an integration strategy across his tech business empire. Musk has previously said that next-generation AI5 chips would be produced at the end of 2026 and announced last month a $16.5 billion deal to source AI6 chips from Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), opens new tab, without providing a production timeline. He has said that future AI inference chips, including AI6, would be deployed in self-driving vehicles and its Optimus humanoid robots, though he has noted the substantial computing power could enable broader AI applications. The Dojo team recently lost about 20 workers to newly-formed DensityAI, and the remaining workers are being reassigned to other data center and compute projects within Tesla, the Bloomberg report said. Reporting by Preetika Parashuraman, Mrinmay Dey and Chandni Shah in Bengaluru. Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala, Miyoung Kim and Mark POtter Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Artificial Intelligence * ADAS, AV & Safety * Software-Defined Vehicle * Sustainable & EV Supply Chain

Tesla exec leading development of chip tech and Dojo supercomputer is leaving company

Bannon was leading the development of Tesla's Dojo supercomputer and reported directly to Musk. Bloomberg first reported on Bannon's departure, and added that Musk ordered his team to shut down, with engineers in the group getting reassigned to other initiatives. Tesla didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Since early last year, Musk has been trying to convince shareholders that Tesla, his only publicly traded business, is poised to become an an artificial intelligence and robotics powerhouse, and not just an electric vehicle company. A centerpiece of the transformation was Dojo, a custom-built supercomputer designed to process and train AI models drawing on the large amounts of video and other data captured by Tesla vehicles. Tesla's focus on Dojo and another computing cluster called Cortex were meant to improve the company's advanced driver assistance systems, and to enable Musk to finally deliver on his promise to turn existing Teslas into robotaxis. On Tesla's earnings call in July, Musk said the company expected its newest version of Dojo to be "operating at scale sometime next year, with scale being somewhere around 100,000 H-100 equivalents," referring to a supercomputer built using Nvidia's state of the art chips. Tesla recently struck a $16.5 billion deal with Samsung to produce more of its own A16 chips with the company domestically. Tesla is running a test Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, and a related car service in San Francisco. In Austin, the company's vehicles require a human safety supervisor in the front passenger seat ready to intervene if necessary. In San Francisco, the car service is operated by human drivers, though invited users can hail a ride through a "Tesla Robotaxi" app. On the earnings call, Musk faced questions about how he sees Tesla and his AI company, xAI, keeping their distance given that they could be competing against one another for AI talent. Musk said the companies "are doing different things." He said, "xAI is doing like terabyte scale models and multi-terabyte scale models." Tesla uses "100x smaller models," he said, with the automaker focused on "real-world AI," for its cars and robots and xAI focused on developing software that strives for "artificial super intelligence." Musk also said that some engineers wouldn't join Tesla because "they wanted to work on AGI," one reason he said he formed a new company. Tesla has experienced an exodus of top talent this year due to a combination of job terminations and resignations. Milan Kovac, who was Tesla's head of Optimus robotics engineering, departed, as did David Lau, a vice president of software engineering, and Omead Afshar, Musk's former chief of staff.

Why Tesla's latest move could be a boon for Nvidia, AMD

The end of Tesla 's own AI supercomputer efforts -- where it was developing its own chips -- means Elon Musk's company will become an even bigger customer for major chipmakers, according to Wells Fargo. Analyst Aaron Rakers highlighted Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices as beneficiaries of Tesla's decision to shut down its custom-built AI training supercomputer Dojo team, which was first reported by Bloomberg on Thursday. Pete Bannon, Tesla hardware design engineering vice president, is leaving the company after joining from Apple in 2016, CNBC confirmed. Remaining employees are being reassigned to Tesla, Bloomberg's report said, citing people familiar with the matter. Dojo's end is "an indication that the company is stepping back from its internal AI-optimized silicon efforts," said Rakers. "This should be viewed as a positive for NVIDIA and AMD as this likely increases Tesla usage of general purpose GPUs for AI." Rakers highlighted that Tesla has been notably expanding its graphics processing units (GPU) infrastructure. Tesla has bought several thousands of Nvidia GPUs such as the H100, in an effort to scale its training compute power. "During the 2Q25 earnings call, Tesla disclosed that the company has deployed a ~50k NVIDIA H100 training cluster Cortex. The same week Elon Musk posted that Tesla was deploying an add'l 16k NVIDIA H200 GPUs at its Texas Gigafactory; running at ~67k NVIDIA H100 equivalents," Rakers said. Musk said in early 2024 that while a Dojo supercomputer would cost $500 million to build, "Tesla will spend more than that on Nvidia hardware this year." Nvidia GPUs were being used for Tesla's other efforts beyond Dojo, such as training and inference of its Grok AI chatbot. TSLA 1Y mountain Tesla stock performance over the past year. The analyst acknowledged that the Bloomberg report is markedly different from Musk's comments during Tesla's second-quarter earnings call, during which he said that the Dojo 2 supercomputer is expected to operate at scale next year and that the Dojo 3 and the Ai6 inference chip would find convergence, meaning they would integrate in some way and be the same chip. Tesla's custom-designed Ai6 AI chip was intended for in-vehicle inference for Tesla's Full Self-Driving system. The Dojo supercomputer was designed to train AI models on data captured by Tesla vehicles, and has been part of Musk's heavy emphasis to investors over the last year that Tesla is an artificial intelligence and robotics company, not just an electric vehicle company. Tesla shares edged slightly lower before Friday's market open. The stock is down about 20% year to date.

Tesla shuts down in-house Dojo AI supercomputer project

As first reported by , Tesla is disbanding the team behind , its in-house AI-training supercomputer, and reassigning remaining staff to other projects within the company. This marks a shift in the company's compute sourcing strategy for its AI-focused initiatives such as autonomous driving and the . Head of Dojo Peter Bannon is leaving Tesla, which is the latest departure after roughly 20 Dojo team members recently left to form . In a response to the Bloomberg report on X, Tesla CEO Elon Musk , "It doesn't make sense for Tesla to divide its resources and scale two quite different AI chip designs. The Tesla AI5, AI6 and subsequent chips will be excellent for inference and at least pretty good for training. All effort is focused on that." Musk is referring to Tesla's next-generation AI6 chip that will be made by Samsung following a . These chips will drive the real-time decision-making onboard Tesla vehicles and robots. Shutting down Dojo effectively ends of creating its own in-house training architecture and consolidates the company's efforts on the AI5 and AI6 platforms. While Musk says these chips are "pretty good" for training, the company will now rely heavily on vendors like NVIDIA for training-specific silicon, and is on those chips. AI5 production is in 2026 with AI6 to follow.

Tesla drops Dojo supercomputer as Musk turns to Nvidia, Samsung chips

Tesla has reportedly shut down its Dojo supercomputer project after several high-profile departures, including project head Peter Bannon. Bloomberg reported the move, citing people familiar with the matter. CEO Elon Musk has ended the in-house AI chip program and reassigned the remaining team members to other data center and compute projects. The Dojo project was designed to create custom training chips capable of processing large amounts of data and video from Tesla electric vehicles. This aimed to improve the company's autonomous-driving software by reducing its reliance on external chipmakers.

Chaos at Tesla as Dojo supercomputer team collapses and Elon Musk shifts focus to AI5 and AI6 chip future

Samsung's $16.5 billion chip deal with Tesla marks a major turn in AI development Tesla has shut down its Dojo supercomputer team, in what appears to be a major shift in the company's artificial intelligence plans. Reports from Bloomberg claim the decision followed the exit of team leader Peter Bannon and the loss of about 20 other staff members to a newly formed venture called DensityAI. The remaining team members will now be reassigned to other computing and data center projects within Tesla. The Dojo system was originally developed around custom training chips designed to process large amounts of driving data and video from Tesla's electric vehicles. The aim was to use this information to train the company's autonomous driving software more efficiently than off-the-shelf systems. However, CEO Elon Musk said on X it no longer made sense to split resources between two different AI chips. Tesla has not responded to requests for comment, but Musk has outlined the company's focus on developing its AI5 and AI6 chips. He said these would be "excellent for inference and at least pretty good for training" and could be placed in large supercomputer clusters, a configuration he suggested might be called "Dojo 3." The company's shift away from the Dojo project comes amid broader restructuring efforts that have seen multiple executive departures and thousands of job cuts. Tesla has also been working on integrating AI tools such as the Grok chatbot into its vehicles, expanding its AI ambitions beyond self-driving technology. Tesla's plans for future AI computing infrastructure and chip production after Dojo rely heavily on outside technology suppliers, with Nvidia and AMD expected to provide computing capabilities, while Samsung Electronics will manufacture chips for the company. Samsung recently secured a $16.5 billion deal to supply AI chips to Tesla, which are expected to power autonomous vehicles, humanoid robots, and data centers. Musk has previously said Samsung's new Texas plant will produce Tesla's AI6 chip, with AI5 production planned for late 2026. For now, Musk appears confident that Tesla's chip roadmap will support its ambitions. But with the original Dojo team largely gone and reliance on external partners increasing, the company's AI trajectory will depend on whether its new chips and computing infrastructure can deliver the results Musk has promised.

Tesla Shutting Down Its AI Supercomputer As Staff Leaves in Droves to Join Competitor

As sales continue to plummet worldwide, Tesla is giving up on building an in-house supercomputer for computer vision processing as part of its advanced driver assistance system. As Bloomberg reports, the head of the project, dubbed Dojo and which CEO Elon Musk used to hype up immensely, is leaving the company. The team has already lost around 20 workers to a separate data center firm that's been poaching former Tesla executives. The rest of the team will reportedly be reassigned to other data center projects. Considering that Musk has refocused the company's efforts on a robotaxi service that relies on computer vision, it's not exactly confidence-inducing. Musk once called Dojo a "beast," but admitted last year that he had come to think of Dojo "as a long shot" because "it's not something that is a high probability." "It doesn't make sense for Tesla to divide its resources and scale two quite different AI chip designs," Musk tweeted on Thursday. Instead, per Bloomberg, Tesla is looking to rely on external tech partners, including Nvidia, AMD, and Samsung, for manufacturing AI chips. But the company isn't giving up on its in-house chips entirely. "The Tesla AI5, AI6 and subsequent chips will be excellent for inference and at least pretty good for training," Musk wrote. "All effort is focused on that." Dojo was designed to train machine learning models powering Tesla's Autopilot and so-called "Full Self-Driving" advanced driver assistance software. But Tesla's Dojo team quickly fell victim to surging competition. The enormous AI hype has led to major tech companies poaching key talent, offering staffers at competing firms absurd sums of money. Even beyond its AI efforts, Tesla has suffered from a major brain drain, with key execs leaving the company in droves. The carmaker is still grappling with the consequences of Musk's well-documented embrace of far-right ideologies, causing sales to plummet and leaving a massive hole in its finances. Even its efforts to develop self-driving car technologies have been chaotic and underwhelming. Its initial rollout of a robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, has been plagued by technical issues and terrifying near misses. Last week, Tesla was handed one of its biggest legal blows yet when a Florida jury deemed the EV maker partially responsible for a fatal collision involving its Autopilot software, a decision that will force it to pay out nearly a quarter billion dollars. Despite the warning signs, investors have been propping up Tesla's market cap of well over $1 trillion. Shares are up over ten percent over the past month. During the company's second earnings call last month, Musk revealed that the company was looking "to find convergence," producing a single AI chip for "Dojo 3." But now that the Dojo team has reportedly been disbanded in its entirety, it's unclear what the future of Tesla's supercomputer efforts will look like. Was it yet another massive distraction by Musk? For now, it appears far more likely that Tesla will have to continue to rely on externally-sourced hardware. The company has already signed a $16.5 billion deal with Samsung for AI semiconductors, indicating that the days of its in-house chips might soon be numbered.

Tesla's 'Dojo' Supercomputer For FSD Is Dead

The supercomputer was estimated to add $500 billion to Tesla's value. Tesla is killing its Dojo supercomputer, which helped train the algorithms that power the company's advanced driving assistance systems like Autopilot and supervised Full Self-Driving, as well as the Optimus robot. The decision, first reported by Bloomberg quoting people familiar with the matter and then confirmed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, comes as the American company is slowly moving away from in-house development for AI solutions and instead striking deals with third parties like Nvidia, AMD and Samsung. As part of the Dojo supercomputer shutdown, Peter Bannon, who was the team leader, will leave the company. Meanwhile, other team members will be reassigned to other data centers and compute projects at Tesla, according to Bloomberg's sources. Earlier this year, during the most recent quarterly earnings call, Musk hinted that the company could drop the Dojo supercomputer and instead work more closely with external partners. "Thinking about Dojo 3 and the AI6 inference chip, it seems like intuitively, we want to try to find convergence there, where it's basically the same chip," Musk said last month. Despite killing the Dojo project, which lived in New York, Tesla is not abandoning its AI-powered ambitions. A bigger and better supercomputer dubbed Cortex entered the construction phase last year in Austin, Texas, powered by over 100,000 Nvidia H100 and H200 chips. Another data center is live in Memphis. So, even without the Dojo supercomputer, Tesla's AI-training cluster is still growing, as the company is working hard to bring unsupervised Full Self-Driving to the market after years of broken promises. While the data centers' main job is to analyze video data from Tesla EVs driving around the world, there's also a hardware component to the company's autonomous driving efforts. To up the ante here, Tesla has struck a $16.5 billion deal with Samsung to secure AI semiconductors that would be the base for the automaker's AI6 (also known as Hardware 6) architecture. The deal, which is valid through 2033, includes building a factory in Texas to produce the chips locally. The current generation of vehicle hardware chips, AI4 (or Hardware 4), is also made by Samsung, while the upcoming AI5 (Hardware 5) units will come from TSMC, initially from Taiwan and then from Arizona.

Tesla's Dojo supercomputer looks dead as more execs leave for competing startup

Tesla's Dojo supercomputer project is reportedly over. Bloomberg reports that CEO Elon Musk is killing the project after a mass exodus of talent from the Dojo team to a competing startup. Dojo was the name of Tesla's in-house AI chip development to create supercomputers to train its AI models for self-driving. Tesla hired a bunch of top chip architects and tried to develop better AI accelerator chips to rely less on companies like NVIDIA, AMD, and others. It has been running into delays for years. We previously reported on significant setbacks. In 2018, Jim Keller, the famed chip architect who was first hired to lead Tesla's chip-making effort, left the company. Ganesh Venkataramanan succeeded him, but he left Tesla in 2023. For the last few years, Peter Bannon, who worked with Keller for years, has been leading Tesla's chip-making programs, but he is now reportedly also leaving the automaker. Bloomberg reports that Musk has "ordered the effort to be shut down.": Peter Bannon, who was heading up Dojo, is leaving and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has ordered the effort to be shut down, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. The team has lost about 20 workers recently to newly formed DensityAI, and remaining Dojo workers are being reassigned to other data center and compute projects within Tesla, the people said. DensityAI is a new startup currently in stealth mode, founded by several former Tesla employees, including Venkataramanan. It reportedly plans to build chips for AI data centers and robots, much like the Dojo program. The company recently hired 20 former Tesla employees who worked on Dojo. While the program appeared to be lagging behind for years as Tesla increasingly bought more compute power from NVIDIA, Musk has been claiming progress. The CEO said in June: Tesla Dojo AI training computer making progress. We start bringing Dojo 2 online later this year. It takes three major iterations for a new technology to be great. Dojo 2 is good, but Dojo 3 will be great. During Tesla's quarterly conference call in late July, the CEO claimed that Dojo 2 will be "operating at scale sometime next year." It's unclear whether the report is accurate or if it's an extrapolation from the talent exodus to Elon killing Dojo, or if Elon was lying just a few weeks ago. Alternatively, this development may be so recent that Elon went from being confident in Dojo a few weeks ago to disbanding the team working on it now. Either way, I think it's clear that the project has been lagging, and Tesla has been extremely dependent on chip suppliers rather than making its own. I think Dojo being likely dead is not a big loss for Tesla. When it comes to chip making, developing its own inference compute for onboard "AI computers" was always the more important project. TSMC is set to produce Tesla's new AI5 chip, which is coming soon, and we have recently learned that Samsung will be manufacturing its AI6 chip. I think the bigger concern from this report is that it's the latest example of an ongoing exodus of talent at Tesla.

Tesla disbands ambitious Dojo supercomputer team, shifts compute power to AMD and NVIDIA

TL;DR: Tesla has disbanded its in-house Dojo supercomputer team, with leader Peter Bannon departing, shifting focus to external partners like NVIDIA, AMD, and Samsung for AI chip manufacturing. Samsung's $16.5 billion contract through 2033 will produce Tesla's FSD chips, marking a strategic move in autonomous driving technology. Tesla has reportedly disbanded its Dojo supercomputer team, with its leader leaving the company and increasing its reliance on external technology partners like NVIDIA and AMD for compute power. In a new report from Bloomberg, we have heard that Tesla is disbanding its Dojo supercomputer team, which was working on in-house AI chips for driverless technology. Peter Bannon was leading Dojo, and is departing the company with Tesla CEO Elon Musk ordering the Dojo supercomputer effort to be shut down, according to Bloomberg's sources. The Dojo team lost around 20 workers recently to newly-formed DensityAI, with remaining Dojo workers being reassigned to other data center and compute projects inside Tesla. Tesla will reportedly increase its reliance on external technology partners like NVIDIA and AMD for its compute power requirements, and Samsung Electronics for chip manufacturing. Samsung recently signed a $16.5 billion foundry contract with Tesla that lasts through until 2033, where it will manufacture FSD chips for the company on American soil. Tesla's ambitious Dojo supercomputer was designed in-house, and used to train the machine learning models behind its Autopilot and FSD (Full Self-Driving) programs, as well as its Optimus humanoid robot. The Dojo supercomputer takes in all of the data captured by vehicles and processes it rapidly to improve its algorithms, with analysts saying Dojo could've been a key advantage, with Morgan Stanley estimating back in 2023 that it would add $500 billion to Tesla's value.

Tesla ends Dojo project to focus on AI6 chip design

Elon Musk confirmed Tesla's disbandment of its Dojo AI training supercomputer team, citing a strategic pivot towards AI6 chip development, impacting the Buffalo, New York facility and previous plans for a second Dojo cluster in 2026. Musk stated on X that the decision to shut down Dojo and implement "tough personnel choices" stemmed from the realization that "all paths converged to AI6," rendering "Dojo 2" an "evolutionary dead end." He further suggested that "Dojo 3" could be conceptualized as "a large number of AI6 [systems-on-a-chip] on a single board." Tesla had previously brought its initial Dojo supercomputer online, utilizing a combination of Nvidia GPUs and proprietary D1 chips. Subsequent plans included the construction of a second Dojo factory, referred to by Musk as "Dojo 2," which was intended to operate with a second-generation D2 chip. The D2 chip and the broader Dojo initiative have been shelved as Tesla redirects its focus to its AI5 and AI6 chips. These chips are being manufactured by TSMC and Samsung, respectively. The AI5 chip is engineered primarily for powering FSD, Tesla's driver assistance system. The AI6 chip, conversely, is designed for both onboard inference, supporting self-driving capabilities in vehicles and autonomous functions in humanoid robots, and for large-scale AI training applications. Musk explained his rationale for consolidating chip development, posting, "It doesn't make sense for Tesla to divide its resources and scale two quite different AI chip designs." He added, "The Tesla AI5, AI6 and subsequent chips will be excellent for inference and at least pretty good for training. All effort is focused on that." Regarding supercomputer clusters, Musk indicated that it is more efficient to assemble "many AI5/AI6 chips on a board, whether for inference or training, simply to reduce network cabling complexity & cost by a few orders of magnitude." He remarked, "One could call that Dojo 3, I suppose." Musk began discussing Dojo in 2019, consistently positioning it as a foundational element for Tesla's objectives of achieving full self-driving and commercializing humanoid robots. Mentions of Dojo ceased around August 2024, at which point Musk began promoting Cortex, described as a "giant new AI training supercluster being built at Tesla HQ in Austin to solve real-world AI." The current status of Cortex remains unclear. Tesla invested $500 million to construct a Dojo facility in Buffalo, New York. This strategic shift occurs while Tesla faces declining electric vehicle sales and brand challenges. Tesla also initiated a slow and confined robotaxi launch in Austin in June, which reportedly resulted in numerous instances of problematic driving behavior from the vehicles.

Tesla to Streamline Its AI Chip Design Work, Musk Says

Tesla is reportedly sunsetting its Dojo supercomputer, which had been focused on autonomous driving software. Tesla will streamline its AI chip research to focus on its development of inference chips used to run AI models and make real-time decisions, CEO Elon Musk said, after a media report he had ordered the closure of the in-house Dojo supercomputer team. Bloomberg News on Thursday cited people familiar with the matter as saying Musk had ordered the Dojo team to be disbanded, with team leader Peter Bannon departing the company. Tesla did not reply to a Reuters request for comment. The Dojo supercomputer was designed around custom training chips to process vast amounts of data and video from Tesla EVs to train the automaker's autonomous-driving software. "It doesn't make sense for Tesla to divide its resources and scale two quite different AI chip designs," Musk said in an X post late on Thursday. "The Tesla AI5, AI6 and subsequent chips will be excellent for inference and at least pretty good for training. All effort is focused on that," he said, without directly mentioning Dojo. Morgan Stanley analysts led by Adam Jonas valued the Dojo supercomputer at $500 billion in 2023, saying it opened a new market for the automaker beyond cars sales, similar to how Amazon's cloud unit boosts profit for the ecommerce firm. "Dojo is the key accelerant at the intersection of hardware and software," the brokerage said on August 4. Jonas did not immediately respond to a query if the latest development would hurt Tesla's valuation. Tech companies are increasingly designing custom chips to cut latency, power and cost, while consolidating around fewer architectures. Tesla has been restructuring over the past year, with its share price slumping as sales of its EVs were hit by rising competition and a backlash by European consumers in particular against Musk's political views. The company has seen multiple executive departures and cut thousands of jobs, and redirected its focus to AI-driven self-driving technology and robotics, with Musk pursuing an integration strategy across his tech business empire. Musk has said next-generation AI5 chips would be produced at the end of 2026 and last month announced a $16.5 billion deal to source AI6 chips from Samsung Electronics, without providing a production timeline. He has said future AI inference chips, including AI6, would be deployed in self-driving vehicles and its Optimus humanoid robots, though he has noted the substantial computing power could enable broader AI applications. The Dojo team recently lost about 20 workers to newly-formed DensityAI, and the remaining workers are being reassigned to other data center and compute projects within Tesla, the Bloomberg report said. Reporting by Preetika Parashuraman, Mrinmay Dey, Chandni Shah and Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; editing by Miyoung Kim, Mark Potter and Arun Koyyur. The final deadline for the 2025 Inc. Power Partner Awards is today, Friday, August 8, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

Elon Musk Shuts Down Tesla's Dojo Supercomputer As It Hits 'Evolutionary Dead End'

Elon Musk ends Tesla's Dojo project, shifting resources to new A.I. chips as the company faces core business challenges. Tesla has officially ended its Dojo supercomputer project, closing out a four-year effort to develop one of the world's most powerful A.I. training systems and marking a major shift in Tesla's A.I. ambitions. CEO Elon Musk announced the shutdown in a series of posts on X over the weekend. He also confirmed that the entire Dojo team of about 20 employees has been disbanded. Sign Up For Our Daily Newsletter Sign Up Thank you for signing up! By clicking submit, you agree to our <a href="http://observermedia.com/terms">terms of service</a> and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime. See all of our newsletters Dojo is powered by Tesla's D1 chip, designed in-house (and manufactured by TSMC) to handle massive volumes of driving data for training the company's Full Self-Driving (FSD) system. With Dojo shelved, Tesla is pivoting to a streamlined chip strategy, focusing on next-generation chips like AI5 (manufactured by TSMC) and AI6 (manufactured by Samsung) for both training and deployment. AI5 chip is built to power self-driving and robotics capabilities, while AI6 can additionally handle large-scale A.I. training tasks. "Once it became clear that all paths converged to AI6, I had to shut down Dojo and make some tough personnel choices, as Dojo 2 was now an evolutionary dead end," Musk explained on X. First unveiled at Tesla's AI Day in 2021, Dojo was pitched as a breakthrough that would reduce reliance on third-party chip suppliers such as Nvidia, while delivering greater bandwidth, lower latency and lower costs. The decision follows months of internal turbulence in the Dojo division, including the loss of several key engineers. Musk noted that it no longer made sense for Tesla to divide its resources between two different A.I. chip product lines -- one optimized for inference and another for training. Inference refers to the process of running an already-trained A.I. model to make real-time decisions, such as identifying objects on the road in a moving car. Training, by contrast, is the computationally intensive process of teaching an A.I. model by feeding it massive amounts of data until it can recognize patterns accurately. "In a supercomputer cluster, it would make sense to put many AI5/AI6 chips on a board, whether for inference or training, simply to reduce network cabling complexity and cost by a few orders of magnitude," Musk wrote on X. The shutdown also comes as Tesla faces mounting challenges in its core electric vehicle business. In the latest quarter ended June 30, Tesla's EV revenue dropped 16 percent from the previous year, while total revenue fell 12 percent year-over-year. The company's U.S. market share has also slid sharply, falling to less than 50 percent from 75 percent in 2022.

Tesla shuts down Dojo supercomputer team, reassigns workers amid AI shift: Report

Elon Musk has reportedly shut down Tesla's Dojo supercomputer team, with leader Peter Bannon leaving. This decision comes amid company restructuring and a shift towards AI-driven self-driving technology and robotics. Tesla will increase reliance on external partners like Nvidia, AMD, and Samsung for compute and chip manufacturing, focusing efforts on AI5 and AI6 chips for inference and training. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has ordered to shut down its Dojo supercomputer team, with team leader Peter Bannon departing the company, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The Dojo supercomputer was designed around custom training chips to process vast amounts of data and video from Tesla EVs to train the automaker's autonomous-driving software. Tesla did not reply to a Reuters request for comment. CEO Elon Musk said on X that it didn't make sense for Tesla to divide its resources and scale two different AI chips. Over the past year, Tesla, amid a company-wide restructuring, has seen multiple executive departures and thousands of job cuts. The company has redirected its focus to AI-driven self-driving technology and robotics, with CEO Elon Musk pursuing an integration strategy across his business empire. In March, xAI acquired the social media platform X for $33 billion to bolster its chatbot training capabilities, while Tesla integrated the Grok chatbot into its vehicles. The automaker also plans to increase its reliance on external technology partners such as Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices for compute, and Samsung Electronics for chip manufacturing, as per the Bloomberg report. Last month, Samsung secured a $16.5 billion deal to supply AI chips to Tesla, expected to power self-driving cars, humanoid robots and data centers. Tesla CEO Elon Musk earlier said that Samsung's new chip factory in Taylor, Texas would make Tesla's next-generation AI6 chip. While no timeline was provided for AI6 chip production, Musk has previously said that next-generation AI5 chips will be produced at the end of 2026, suggesting AI6 would follow. "The Tesla AI5, AI6 and subsequent chips will be excellent for inference and at least pretty good for training. All effort is focused on that", Musk said in an X post late Thursday. Musk also said that in a supercomputer cluster, it would make sense to put many AI5/AI6 chips. "One could call that Dojo 3, I suppose", he said. The Dojo team recently lost about 20 workers to newly formed DensityAI, and the remaining workers are being reassigned to other data center and compute projects within Tesla, the Bloomberg report said. Nvidia declined to comment on the Bloomberg report, while AMD and Samsung did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Tesla shuts down Dojo: Here's all you need to know - The Economic Times

This will bring to an end the electric vehicle maker's push to build in-house chips for self-driving technology. The development follows 20 team members leaving Tesla to launch their own AI company, DensityAI. This startup is developing chips, hardware, and software for AI in robotics, AI agents, and automotive applications.Tesla is shutting down the team behind its Dojo supercomputer, ending its push to build in-house chips for self-driving technology, according to Bloomberg. The team's leader, Peter Bannon, is leaving the company. Other team members will be moved to other data centres and computing projects at Tesla. CEO Elon Musk posted on X, saying, "It doesn't make sense for Tesla to divide its resources and scale two quite different AI chip designs." This change comes after about 20 people left Tesla to launch their own AI company, DensityAI. The startup was founded by former Dojo head Ganesh Venkataramanan and ex-Tesla engineers Bill Chang and Ben Floering. They're developing chips, hardware, and software for artificial intelligence (AI) in robotics, AI agents, and automotive applications. Meanwhile, last month, Tesla signed a major $16.5 billion deal to source chips from Samsung Electronics. These chips are expected to power its self-driving cars, humanoid robots, and data centres. According to Musk, these new AI6 chips will be made at Samsung's new chip plant in Taylor, Texas. There's no set date for AI6 production yet. Musk had earlier said Tesla's AI5 chips would begin production at the end of 2026, so AI6 will likely follow that. "The Tesla AI5, AI6, and subsequent chips will be excellent for inference and at least pretty good for training. All effort is focussed on that," Musk said in the post. Shutting down Dojo marks a big change in Tesla's strategy. Musk had long said that Dojo would be key to the company's AI goals and its path to full self-driving, thanks to its power to process massive amounts of video data. He even mentioned it briefly during Tesla's second-quarter earnings call, according to TechCrunch. Just last year, Musk said Tesla would "double down" on Dojo in the run-up to its robotaxi reveal, which happened in October. The Dojo project was a mix of supercomputer and custom chip development. Tesla introduced its D1 chip at the first AI Day in 2021, with Venkataramanan presenting it. The chip was meant to work with Nvidia's GPUs to power the Dojo supercomputer. Now, Tesla plans to lean more on external tech companies like Samsung for chip production and Nvidia and AMD for computing.

Tesla chief Elon Musk redirects AI talent after Dojo shutdown - The Economic Times

After Dojo's shutdown on August 7, employees have been redistributed across different teams within Tesla. This change follows about 20 people leaving Tesla to launch their own AI company, DensityAI.Days after tech billionaire Elon Musk announced the shutdown of Tesla's in-house artificial intelligence (AI) training platform Dojo, the company has reportedly reassigned its engineering staff, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. Dojo's shutdown on August 7 led to employees being redistributed across different teams within Tesla. The report added that several software-focussed personnel now report to Ashok Elluswamy, who leads Tesla's artificial intelligence (AI) efforts across robotaxis and humanoid robots. Additionally, engineers in the semiconductor unit report to Aaron Rodgers, who oversees hardware for Tesla's autonomous driving efforts, whereas firmware staff are led by Silvio Brugada, who has taken charge of the security engineering role at the EV giant. ET reported on August 8 that Dojo's team leader, Peter Bannon, is leaving the company and that other team members will be moved to other data centres and computing projects at Tesla. This change came after about 20 people left Tesla to launch their own AI company, DensityAI. The startup was founded by former Dojo head Ganesh Venkataramanan and ex-Tesla engineers Bill Chang and Ben Floering. Shutting down Dojo marks a big change in Tesla's strategy. Musk had long said that Dojo would be key to the company's AI goals and its path to full self-driving. He even mentioned it briefly during Tesla's second quarter earnings call, according to TechCrunch. Also Read: Tesla gets Texas robotaxi license amid safety lawsuit, Dojo shutdown Elon Musk said in a post on X that it no longer made sense to split resources between two AI chip architectures, adding that the focus will now be on Tesla's own AI5 and AI6 chips.

Tesla Scraps Dojo Supercomputer AI Team As Elon Musk Abandons Internal Chip Effort: Report - NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA), Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD)

Tesla Inc. TSLA has pulled the plug on its Dojo Supercomputer team, responsible for developing in-house AI capabilities, including self-driving chips and AI model training efforts. Restructuring Teams, Talent Poached And A Shift To Outsource AI Development Dojo Supercomputer's leader, Peter Bannon, will leave the company as CEO Elon Musk ordered the department to be shut down, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. The report also outlined that over 20 employees had departed Tesla to join DensityAI, a newly formed company founded by former Tesla executives, including Ganesh Venkataramanan. Musk, meanwhile, has ordered a reshuffling of the remaining Dojo team as they would be reassigned to other departments within Tesla, the report suggests. The report also highlights that Tesla would look at companies like Nvidia Corp NVDA, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD and Samsung Electronics SSNLF for its AI needs. Tesla did not immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comment. Tesla's Chip Deal With Samsung, Planned Robotaxi Expansion The news comes as Tesla announced a deal with Samsung worth over $16.5 billion. The deal would see the Korean giant build AI6 chips for Tesla, powering the company's next-gen self-driving systems. Meanwhile, Tesla's plans to roll out robotaxis in multiple cities to meet Musk's target of serving over half the population of the U.S. could face some challenges. The company, despite announcing its ride-hailing service expansion in the San Francisco Bay Area, can't operate Robotaxis in the state as it does not have a permit. Elon Musk's $29 Billion Pay Package And Dwindling Sales Elsewhere, Tesla announced it will kick off compensation proceedings for Musk, awarding the CEO over 96 million company shares amounting to $29 billion in value as the company puts confusion over Musk's compensation to rest. However, Tesla sales have continued to plunge, with the company experiencing double-digit declines in multiple markets like the UK, as well as France, Sweden and Denmark. Tesla scores well on Momentum, Quality and Growth metrics, but offers poor Value. For more such insights, sign up for Benzinga Edge Stock Rankings today! Check out more of Benzinga's Future Of Mobility coverage by following this link. Read Next: Elon Musk Says $150K Investment In Tesla 'Probably' Makes You A Millionaire Image Via Shutterstock AMDAdvanced Micro Devices Inc$173.316.25%Stock Score Locked: Edge Members Only Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Unlock RankingsEdge RankingsMomentum86.05Growth97.69Quality71.99Value12.16Price TrendShortMediumLongOverviewNVDANVIDIA Corp$181.601.21%SSNLFSamsung Electronics Co Ltd$42.480.34%TSLATesla Inc$320.920.32%Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Tesla Has Reportedly Abandoned Its 'Ambitious' Dojo Supercomputer Plans as Project Head Peter Bannon Spins Out His Own AI Startup, Taking the Core Team With Him

Tesla has abandoned the race for creating its Dojo supercomputers for FSD and other features, as the firm now plans to increase reliance on external partners like NVIDIA. Well, Tesla's Dojo project was one of the first in the market to tap into the supercomputer segment on a more mainstream level. The company had been developing its hardware through partners like TSMC, and the goal was to accumulate as much computing power as possible to enable Tesla's FSD, along with other autonomous projects like humanoid robots. Now, based on a report by Bloomberg, it is revealed that Tesla is abandoning its Dojo supercomputer plans, as the team lead, Peter Bannon is leaving the company to pursue his own startup, called DensityAI. It is claimed that the Dojo team lost around 20 employees to DensityAI. With the dwindling workforce, the remaining employee count has now been shifted to data center projects within the company. More importantly, Tesla will now increase its reliance on external partners such as NVIDIA for its computing needs, so ultimately, the company won't compromise on the computing power needed for projects like FSD. Apart from mounting competition in the AI markets, one of the main reasons why Dojo has been abandoned is the massive talent drain the team has faced. The report states that Dojo's former head, Ganesh Venkataramanan, has founded DensityAI, which will also be joined by several ex-Tesla employees. The drain has convinced Musk to shut off the venture, but given that Musk is highly optimistic about the work being done at xAI, he eventually won't face hurdles in his plans to dominate the AI space. xAI is building up massive hyperscalers in the US, which would feed the computing needs necessary for AI-focused features needed for Tesla. Given that Dojo is abandoned, it would be interesting to see what happens with the recent contract signed by Tesla and Samsung for the AI6 chips, which are also part of the company's pursuit of AI semiconductors.

Tesla Shuts Down Dojo Supercomputer Project, Loses 20 Employees to DensityAI

Dojo Supercomputer Project Stopped: Tesla to Focus on Cortex, the New AI Training Cluster in Austin According to a recent report published by Bloomberg, Tesla has shut down its Dojo supercomputer project. The project was working towards building autonomous driving technology - an advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) that offers varying degrees of automation in the vehicle to almost completely reduce the need for driver intervention. The report further mentioned the exit of Peter Bannon, the head of the Dojo project, from the tech giant. Due to this, the Tesla board offered Elon Musk $29 billion as compensation to invest in Tesla's other AI goals, such as xAI.

Tesla Shuts Down Dojo Supercomputer Team, Bloomberg Says, Citing Sources

--Elon Musk's Tesla is shuttering the team behind its Dojo supercomputer that is used to train the machine-learning models powering the company's Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems and its Optimus humanoid robot, Bloomberg reports, citing sources. --Dojo lead Peter Bannon is leaving after the team lost about 20 workers recently, Bloomberg reports, saying Tesla now plans to increasingly rely on external technology partners like Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices for compute, and Samsung Electronics for chip manufacturing. --Tesla and Bannon didn't respond to Bloomberg's requests for comment. However, Musk wrote on X in response to a user citing Bloomberg's report that the next-generation AI chips going into Tesla vehicles "will be excellent for inference and at least pretty good for training. All effort is focused on that."

Tesla shuts down Dojo supercomputer team, reassigns workers amid strategic AI shift, Bloomberg News reports

(Reuters) -Tesla CEO Elon Musk has ordered to shut down its Dojo supercomputer team, with team leader Peter Bannon departing the company, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The Dojo supercomputer was designed to process vast amounts of data and video from Tesla EVs to train the automaker's autonomous-driving software. The team recently lost about 20 workers to newly formed DensityAI, and the remaining Dojo workers are being reassigned to other data center and compute projects within Tesla, the report said. Reuters could not independently verify the report. Over the past year, Tesla, amid a company-wide restructuring, experienced multiple executive departures and thousands of job cuts. Several key Tesla executives, including leaders in robotics, battery development, and public policy, have recently departed. Tesla has redirected its focus to AI-driven self-driving technology and robotics, with CEO Elon Musk pursuing an integration strategy across his business empire. In March, xAI acquired the social media platform X for $33 billion to bolster its chatbot training capabilities, while Tesla integrated the Grok chatbot into its vehicles. In July, Musk dismissed the possibility of a merger between Tesla and xAI, but announced plans for a shareholder vote to consider Tesla's investment in the AI startup. The automaker also plans to increase its reliance on external technology partners such as Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices for compute, and Samsung Electronics for chip manufacturing, as per Bloomberg. Tesla, Nvidia, AMD and Samsung did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. Last month, Samsung secured a $16.5 billion deal to supply AI chips to Tesla, expected to power self-driving cars, humanoid robots and data centers. The deal is unlikely to resolve Tesla's immediate challenges, such as declining EV sales and efforts to scale its fledgling robotaxi service. (Reporting by Preetika Parashuraman and Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)