Elon Musk has already made what sure sounds like a call on the discontinuation of Tesla’s Dojo AI training supercomputer, describing it as “an evolutionary dead end.” This decision represents a major turn in Tesla’s strategy. The seven people it employed are now being re-assigned to work on an exciting new AI initiative, also called Cortex. Musk made the announcement on X, the social media platform Musk owns, over the weekend.
In that time, since Q4 2019, Musk has repeatedly marketed the Dojo project. He frames it as a key element of Tesla’s effort to deliver full self-driving and eventually deliver humanoid robots. Dojo was initially conceived to radically change the way Tesla trains its AI, especially for self-driving cars. Today, the company announced plans to construct a second facility—dubbed “Dojo 2”—outfitted with an enhanced second-generation D2 chip. Talk of Dojo has faded since August 2024, when Musk turned on the marketing for Cortex instead.
Cortex represents a huge change in direction from the press release Tesla. The company is building another colossal new AI training supercluster at its new HQ in Austin. Musk made it clear that this new initiative aims to address hard, real-world AI problems. It also unifies the company’s recently fragmented efforts at AI training.
“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,” – Elon Musk
The original Dojo system ran on a mix of Nvidia GPUs and Tesla’s in-house-designed D1 chips. It was a visionary project with incredible potential until Tesla unceremoniously put it on the shelf. They are concentrating their efforts on building out the AI5 and AI6 chipsets, which TSMC and Samsung are in the process of fabricating now. Musk specifically said that these new chips were going to be best at inference tasks and good enough for training tasks.
“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.” – Elon Musk
Musk had previously targeted having Tesla’s second cluster up and running “at scale” by 2026. Now, the decision to dump Dojo is a big change from those plans. The shift raises questions about the future of Tesla’s AI initiatives and how they will align with the company’s broader objectives.
Musk acknowledged the complexities involved in managing multiple AI chip designs, stating, “It doesn’t make sense for Tesla to divide its resources and scale two quite different AI chip designs.” This comment indicates a very smart, strategic merging of efforts dovetailed to continuing to push Tesla’s advantage in AI.
The winding down of the Dojo project coincides with increasing competition in the AI sector, where companies are making rapid advancements. Tesla appears to be changing its priorities. Observers in the industry are keenly watching to see if the move to Cortex undermines its creative technological innovations.
“One could call that Dojo 3, I suppose,” – Elon Musk