Elon Musk Declares Tesla Dojo Shutdown: “A Halt in Advancement”

Over the weekend, Elon Musk announced the disbandment of the team responsible for Tesla’s Dojo AI training supercomputer, just after revealing that the second cluster would be running at full capacity by 2026.

“With new trends pointing towards a shift to AI6, I had to make the difficult choice to shut down Dojo and implement tough staffing decisions, as Dojo 2 has become an evolutionary dead end,” Musk shared on X, the social media platform he owns, on Sunday. “Dojo 3 will effectively morph into multiple AI6 [systems-on-a-chip] integrated onto a single board.”

Following the successful launch of its first Dojo supercomputer, which employed Nvidia GPUs alongside Tesla’s proprietary D1 chips, the company intended to develop a second Dojo facility—dubbed “Dojo 2”—designed to feature an advanced D2 chip.

Progress on the D2 chip appears to have stalled alongside the entire Dojo initiative as Tesla transitions to its AI5 and AI6 chips manufactured by TSMC and Samsung, respectively. The AI5 chip is primarily for FSD, Tesla’s driver assistance system, while the AI6 chip is intended for onboard inference, facilitating self-driving capabilities in vehicles and autonomous functionalities in humanoid robots, in addition to extensive AI training.

“It doesn’t make sense for Tesla to spread its resources across two distinct AI chip designs,” Musk remarked late Friday. “The Tesla AI5, AI6, and subsequent chips will excel at inference and will be suitable for training purposes. All efforts will be directed toward that.”

He highlighted that, for a supercomputer cluster, consolidating “numerous AI5/AI6 chips on a single board, whether for inference or training, is a more logical approach aiming to significantly cut down on the complexity and costs of network cabling.”

“You might think of that as Dojo 3, perhaps,” he suggested.

Since 2019, Musk has underscored the importance of Dojo, stating it was key to Tesla’s goal of achieving fully autonomous driving and commercializing humanoid robots. Interest in Dojo began to fade around August 2024 when Musk redirected his focus to Cortex, a “massive new AI training supercluster being built at Tesla HQ in Austin to tackle real-world AI challenges.”

Whether Cortex is currently in development remains uncertain. TechCrunch has contacted Tesla for updates regarding the status of the Dojo facility, which secured a $500 million investment for its establishment in Buffalo, New York.

This strategic change comes as Tesla grapples with declining EV sales and significant brand challenges arising from Musk’s political activities. He has been actively reassuring investors that Tesla stays committed to achieving autonomy, despite a gradual and limited rollout of robotaxis in Austin last June, which triggered several concerning reports about the vehicles’ driving behaviors.

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