Elon Musk said over the long weekend that Tesla plans to restart work on Dojo3, the company’s previously abandoned third-generation AI chip, with a new focus on space-based AI compute rather than training self-driving models on Earth.
Dojo Project Revival After Shutdown
The announcement comes five months after Tesla shut down its Dojo program. The company disbanded the team behind its Dojo supercomputer following the departure of Dojo lead Peter Bannon. Around 20 Dojo employees later joined DensityAI, an AI infrastructure startup founded by former Dojo head Ganesh Venkataramanan alongside ex-Tesla employees Bill Chang and Ben Floering.
At the time of the shutdown, Bloomberg reported that Tesla planned to increase its reliance on external partners, including Nvidia and AMD for compute, and Samsung for chip production. Musk’s latest comments indicate a change in that approach.
In-House Chip Roadmap Cited
In a post on X, Musk said the decision to revive Dojo was based on the condition of Tesla’s internal chip development, stating that the company’s AI5 chip design was “in good shape.”
Tesla’s AI5 chip, manufactured by TSMC, was designed to support automated driving systems and the company’s Optimus humanoid robots. Last summer, Tesla also signed a $16.5 billion agreement with Samsung to manufacture AI6 chips intended to power Tesla vehicles, Optimus robots, and large-scale AI training in data centers.
Shift Toward Space-Based Compute
Musk said on Sunday that “AI7/Dojo3 will be for space-based AI compute,” describing the revived effort as a project aimed beyond terrestrial applications. He also used the same post to recruit engineers, inviting candidates to email Tesla with a summary of difficult technical problems they have worked on.
The comments mark a departure from Dojo’s original goal of supporting autonomous driving model training and place the project within a broader discussion about the future of large-scale AI infrastructure.
Industry Context And Timing
The announcement followed developments at CES 2026, where Nvidia introduced Alpamayo, an open source autonomous driving model positioned as a competitor to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software. Musk commented on X that solving rare edge cases in autonomous driving remains difficult and expressed hope that competing efforts succeed.
Musk and other technology executives have previously said that future data center growth may face constraints from limited power availability on Earth. Axios recently reported that Sam Altman has also expressed interest in space-based data centers.
Role Of SpaceX And Financing Plans
According to Axios, Musk has discussed using an upcoming IPO of SpaceX to help fund a plan involving Starship launches to deploy compute satellites. The concept involves placing hardware in orbit where it could operate under constant sunlight and generate solar power continuously.
The report noted that significant technical challenges remain, including the difficulty of cooling high-power computing systems in space.
Featured image credits: Flickr
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