According to Bloomberg, Peter Bannon - the head of the Dojo project will leave Tesla, the remaining members will be transferred to other projects in data centers and computers. This decision came after 20 former employees left the company to establish the startup DensityAI - specializing in developing chips, hardware, and software for AI data centers.
The Dojo was announced by Musk in 2019, with the ambition to process huge volumes of video data to serve AI and autonomous vehicles. In 2023, Morgan Stanley estimates that this project could contribute an additional $500 billion in market value to Tesla. However, since August 2024, Musk has begun to shift his attention to Cortex - a new AI training supercluster at Austin headquarters.
Initially, Dojo combined the Tesla-developed D1 chip with the Nvidia GPU, with a plan to upgrade to the D2 chip to overcome the previous generation's limitations. But now, Tesla will rely more heavily on Nvidia, along with partners like AMD (computers) and Samsung (chip manufacturing). Last month, the company signed a $16.5 billion contract with Samsung to produce AI6 chips, which can serve both FSD systems, Optimus robots and high-performance AI training.
The decision to close Dojo comes as the board of directors has proposed a $29 billion salary package to keep Musk focused on AI efforts at Tesla, rather than spreading it to other companies like AI xAI startups.
