What just happened? Tesla has scrapped its ambitious Dojo supercomputer project, which was designed to train the company's full self-driving neural networks. The decision marks a surprising change of course for Elon Musk, who had publicly touted Dojo as a key component in achieving Tesla's autonomous driving goals.
Dojo project head Peter Bannon is reportedly leaving Tesla, along with several key engineers and chip designers, to join a startup called DensityAI. The new company was founded last year by former Dojo lead Ganesh Venkataramanan and ex-Tesla employees Bill Chang and Ben Floering.
Roughly 20 members of the Dojo team – including some senior-level executives – have reportedly joined DensityAI, along with engineers from across the tech industry. The startup is developing both hardware and software to power AI data centers focused on robotics and automotive applications.
Musk later confirmed the report, stating that Tesla will shift its resources toward scaling its AI5 and AI6 chips rather than pursuing two separate AI chip designs. Musk said in a post on X that the current chips, along with their successors, will be "excellent for inference and at least pretty good for training."
It doesn't make sense for Tesla to divide its resources and scale two quite different AI chip designs.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 8, 2025
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 previously stated that Tesla's next-generation AI5 chips will enter manufacturing at the end of 2026, with the AI6 expected to go into production sometime in 2027 or 2028. These chips are intended for use in Tesla's FSD-enabled vehicles and Optimus humanoid robots, though Musk has suggested they could also support broader AI applications.
Tesla's decision to shut down the Dojo project marks a significant strategic shift for the automaker. Musk had championed Dojo for years, describing it as central to Tesla's long-term goal of achieving full self-driving. However, despite his early enthusiasm, there had been growing signs that all was not well with the initiative.
In recent months, Musk had been noticeably quiet about Dojo, offering only a brief mention during Tesla's second-quarter earnings call earlier this year. Speaking to investors at the time, he said he was considering merging the Dojo 3 and AI6 inference chip designs to avoid spreading resources too thin.
With Dojo now shelved, Tesla's AI ambitions will be supported by another in-house supercomputer named Cortex. Currently under construction at the company's Austin data center, Cortex is expected to be powered by more than 100,000 Nvidia H100 and H200 accelerators once complete.