Tesla is disbanding the team behind its Dojo supercomputer, ending its in-house chip development program for autonomous driving. Dojo lead Peter Bannon is departing, and remaining team members will transition to other compute and data center projects within the company.
The move follows the exit of about 20 former Dojo engineers who formed DensityAI, a stealth startup developing AI chips, hardware, and software for robotics, AI agents, and automotive applications. Tesla will now increase reliance on partners including NVIDIA, AMD, and Samsung, the latter recently signing a $16.5 billion deal to produce Tesla’s AI6 inference chips.
The decision marks a significant pivot away from Dojo, once positioned as the cornerstone of Tesla’s AI and self-driving ambitions.