Tesla shuts down the team behind its Dojo supercomputer
- Tesla has shut down its Dojo supercomputer team, led by Peter Bannon, marking a shift away from using in-house technology for AI model training.
- The company will now partner with Nvidia and AMD for compute and turn to Samsung for chip manufacturing, as announced by CEO Elon Musk last month.
- Tesla has rolled out its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, with a safety monitor in the passenger seat, contradicting Musk’s promise of “no one in the car”.
- The Dojo team took another hit earlier this month when around 20 members left to start DensityAI, a startup focused on data center services for industries from automotive to robotics.
- Despite the shift, Tesla CEO Elon Musk remains optimistic about its AI capabilities, stating that the “Tesla AI5, AI6 and subsequent chips will be excellent for inference and at least pretty good for training.”
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.