Tesla has decided to discontinue the development of its own Dojo supercomputer, which was to become a key element in the development of full-fledged autopilot and artificial intelligence. This is reported by Bloomberg.
Project leader Peter Bannon is leaving the company, and about 20 team members have already moved on to a new startup, DensityAI. The rest of the staff will be transferred to other internal Tesla projects related to computing power and data centers.
Project Dojo was years in the making and was supposed to allow Tesla to train AI models for Autopilot, Full Self-Driving (FSD) and the Optimus robot. It ran on Tesla’s own D1 chip. Analysts believed that Dojo could be a competitive advantage, with Morgan Stanley estimating its potential contribution to Tesla’s capitalization at $500 billion.
However, Tesla is now changing its strategy. The company will focus on using technologies from external partners, including NVIDIA, AMD, and Samsung. Elon Musk explained on the social network X that it is not practical to disperse resources between two different AI chip designs.
Meanwhile, former Dojo engineers, including ex-CEO Ganesh Venkataramanan, have formed DensityAI, a company that develops chips, hardware, and software for AI data centers for use in robotics, autonomous vehicles, and other areas.
The Dojo closure isn't the only major loss for Tesla this year. The company has faced key staff departures, falling sales, and criticism of Musk's political activism.
By the way, Tesla has already signed a $16.5 billion deal with Samsung to supply AI chips until 2033. They will be produced at a new factory in Texas.