Tesla shuts down Dojo supercomputer team, focuses on AI5 and AI6 chips

Tesla has shut down its Dojo supercomputer team and reassigned workers to other projects, with team leader Peter Bannon departing the company. The move reflects CEO Elon Musk’s strategic pivot toward consolidating AI chip development rather than dividing resources across multiple custom silicon projects, as the company increasingly relies on external partners like Nvidia and Samsung for its AI computing needs.

The big picture: Tesla is streamlining its AI strategy by abandoning its custom Dojo supercomputer in favor of focusing development efforts on its next-generation AI5 and AI6 chips.
• Musk explained on X that “it didn’t make sense for Tesla to divide its resources and scale two different AI chips.”
• The Dojo supercomputer was originally designed around custom training chips to process vast amounts of data and video from Tesla electric vehicles for autonomous-driving software development.

What’s happening to the team: The Dojo shutdown involves significant workforce changes as Tesla continues company-wide restructuring.
• About 20 workers recently left to join newly formed DensityAI, while remaining team members are being reassigned to other data center and compute projects within Tesla.
• This follows a pattern of executive departures and thousands of job cuts over the past year as Tesla redirects focus toward AI-driven self-driving technology and robotics.

External partnerships taking center stage: Tesla is increasing reliance on established technology partners rather than developing everything in-house.
• The company plans to lean more heavily on Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices for compute power, while Samsung Electronics handles chip manufacturing.
• Samsung recently secured a $16.5 billion deal to supply AI chips to Tesla, expected to power self-driving cars, humanoid robots, and data centers.
• Musk previously announced that Samsung’s new chip factory in Taylor, Texas, would manufacture Tesla’s next-generation AI6 chip.

What’s next for Tesla’s AI chips: Despite shutting down Dojo, Musk outlined an ambitious roadmap for Tesla’s custom silicon development.
• “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.
• Next-generation AI5 chips are expected to be produced by the end of 2026, with AI6 following afterward.
• Musk suggested that in a supercomputer cluster, “it would make sense to put many AI5/AI6 chips. One could call that Dojo 3, I suppose.”

Broader strategic context: The Dojo shutdown aligns with Musk’s integration strategy across his business empire, including recent moves involving his other companies.
• In March, xAI acquired social media platform X for $33 billion to enhance chatbot training capabilities.
• Tesla has also integrated the Grok chatbot into its vehicles, demonstrating cross-company AI collaboration.