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Elon Musk restarts Dojo3 'space' supercomputer project as AI5 chip design gets in 'good shape' — will be first Tesla-built supercomputer to feature all-in-house hardware, with no help from Nvidia
Elon Musk has confirmed on X that Tesla has restarted work on the Dojo3 supercomputer following the new success of its AI5 chip design. The billionaire stated in a recent X post that the AI5 chip design is now in "good shape", enabling Tesla to shuffle resources back to the Dojo 3 project. Musk also added that he is hiring more people to help build the chips that will inevitably be used in Tesla's next-gen supercomputer.
This news follows Tesla's decision that it was cancelling Dojo's wafer-level processor initiative in late 2025. Dojo 3 has gone through several iterations since Elon Musk first chimed in on the project, but according to Musk's latest thoughts on it, Dojo 3 will be the first Tesla-built supercomputer to take advantage of purely in-house hardware only. Previous iterations, such as Dojo2, took advantage of a mixture of in-house chips and Nvidia AI GPUs.
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 AI_Chips@Tesla.com with 3 bullet points on the toughest technical problems you’ve solved.January 18, 2026
Tesla’s chip game is no joke. AI5 chip will be roughly comparable to a Nvidia Hopper Chip in a single SoC, and Blackwell class when you run two of them together.Those AI chips from Nvidia run ~$25K-$50K each. AI5 will run at ~250W compared to H100’s 700W or Blackwell’s… pic.twitter.com/KAWtwQQC2KJanuary 19, 2026
According to Musk, the Dojo3 will use AI5/AI6 or AI7, the latter two being part of Musk's new 9-month cadence roadmap. AI5 is AI5 is almost ready for deployment and is Tesla's most competitive chip yet, yielding Hopper-class performance on a single chip and Blackwell-class performance with two chips working together using "much less power". Work on Dojo 3 coincides directly with Musk's new nine-month release cycle, where Tesla will start producing new chips every nine months, starting with its AI6 chip. AI7, we believe, will likely be an iterative upgrade to AI6; building a brand new architecture every 9 months would be extremely difficult, if not impossible.
It will be interesting to see whether or not Dojo3 will prove to be successful. Dojo 1 was supposed to be one of the most powerful supercomputers when it was built, but competition from Nvidia prevented that from happening, among other problems. Dojo 2 was cancelled mid-way through development. If Tesla can deliver competitive performance with Nvidia GPUs consistently, Dojo 3 has the potential to be Tesla's first truly successful supercomputer. Elon also hinted that Dojo 3 will be used for "space-based AI compute".
AI4 by itself will achieve self-driving safety levels very far above human. AI5 will make the cars almost perfect and greatly enhance Optimus.AI6 will be for Optimus and data centers. AI7/Dojo3 will be space-based AI compute.January 18, 2026
