Last year, the Dojo chapter at Tesla seemed to have already ended, but now the project is returning and taking on a new role in the group.
• Development of Dojo 3 restarts after a six-month hiatus
• Tesla is actively hiring engineers for the project
• New 9-month development cycles for AI chips announced (AI7, AI8, AI9)
Surprising resumption after team disbandment
In August 2025, there were many signs that there would be a final cut: Tesla declared the Dojo program to be over and disbanded the team responsible after project manager Peter Bannon said goodbye. Some of the specialists reappeared shortly afterwards at the new AI infrastructure startup DensityAI, which was founded by former Tesla engineers and focuses on high-performance data centers, reports TechCrunch. During this phase, Tesla seemed to be settling on a course in which external hardware from NVIDIA and AMD as well as Samsung would play a significantly larger role as manufacturing partners, while its own supercomputers would take a back seat.
With the current turnaround Elon Musk to a succinct but clear message on At the same time, Tesla is embarking on a new wave of hiring as it seeks to attract experienced chip and systems engineers, with the company pitching its own processors as candidates for some of the industry’s highest-volume chips. All in all, the impression is that the break decided in the summer of 2025 was more of a radical reorientation than a final farewell, which is now being continued with new goals and stricter technological demands.
Now that the AI5 chip design is in good shape, Tesla will restart work on Dojo3.
If you’re interested in working on what will be the highest volume chips in the world, send a note to [email protected] with 3 bullet points on the toughest technical problems you’ve solved.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 18, 2026
From autonomous driving to space-based AI
The content focus of Dojo 3 significantly shifts the focus of the project and tells a new story about Tesla’s ambitions in the AI sector. Initially, Dojo was primarily designed to process huge amounts of data from the vehicle fleet and to continuously improve the neural networks for the full self-driving system in order to reduce driving errors and achieve safety levels well above those of human drivers. Now a different perspective is coming to the fore: According to Musk, Dojo 3 will become the basis for “space-based AI computing”, i.e. for computing power that is no longer provided exclusively in earthly data centers, but in Earth orbit, as TechCrunch reports.
Aggressive development cycles
The technical strategy behind the resumption of Dojo 3 is strongly influenced by the theme of speed and clearly stands out from the usual cycles of the semiconductor industry. Musk promised to develop new chip generations every nine months, which would clearly exceed the pace of established manufacturers such as Intel, AMD and NVIDIA and push Tesla into an unusually aggressive role in the chip market, reports NotaTeslaApp. According to information from Tom’s Hardware, the AI5 chip manufactured by TSMC should advance into the performance range of NVIDIA’s Hopper and, in combination, even approach the level of Blackwell, while at the same time power requirements and costs should be noticeably lower. If this combination of performance and efficiency proves to be true, Tesla could reverse some of its previously dominant procurement relationships and rely more heavily on internal hardware for its own data centers.
Editorial team finanzen.net
By the way: AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) and other US stocks can even be traded on finanzen.net ZERO until 11 p.m. (without order fees, plus spreads). Open a depot now for free and secure a new customer bonus!
Selected leverage products on AMD (Advanced Micro Devices)
With knock-outs, speculative investors can participate disproportionately in price movements. Simply select the lever you want and we will show you suitable open-end products on AMD (Advanced Micro Devices)
The leverage must be between 2 and 20
Advertising
