Elon Musk said over the long weekend that Tesla intends to restart work on Dojo3, the electric vehicle maker’s previously discontinued third-generation AI chip. But this time, Dojo3 will not aim to train autonomous models on Earth. Instead, Musk says it will be dedicated to “space-based AI computing.”
The move comes five months after Tesla effectively shut down its Dojo effort. The company disbanded the team behind its Dojo supercomputer following the departure of Dojo head Peter Bannon. Also around twenty workers from the Dojo I left to join DensityAIa new AI infrastructure startup founded by former Dojo Director Ganesh Venkataramanan and former Tesla employees Bill Chang and Ben Floering.
At the time of Dojo’s closure, Bloomberg reported that Tesla planned to increase its reliance on Nvidia and other partners like AMD for computing and Samsung for chipmaking, rather than continuing to develop its own custom silicon. Musk’s latest comments suggest the strategy has changed again.
The billionaire leader and Republican megadonor said in a post on The decision to relaunch Dojo was based on the status of its internal chip roadmap, noting that Tesla’s AI5 chip design was “in good shape.”
Tesla’s AI5 chip, made by TSMC, was designed to power the automaker’s automated driving features and Optimus humanoid robots. Last summer, Tesla signed a $16.5 billion deal with Samsung to build its AI6 chips that promise to power Tesla and Optimus vehicles, as well as enable high-performance AI training in data centers.
“AI7/Dojo3 will be intended for spatial AI computing”, Musk said Sunday, positioning the resurrected project as more of a moonshot.
To achieve this, Tesla is now preparing to rebuild the team it dismantled months ago. Musk used the same message to recruit engineers directly, writing: “If you are interested in working on what will be the largest volume of chips in the world, send a note to [email protected] with 3 chips on the hardest technical problems you have solved.” »
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The timing of the announcement is remarkable. At CES 2026, Nvidia unveiled Alpamayo, an open source AI model for autonomous driving that directly challenges Tesla’s FSD software. Musk commented on »
Musk and several other AI leaders have argued that the future of data centers may lie off-planet, since Earth’s power grids are already stretched to capacity. Axios recently reported Sam Altman, Musk’s rival and CEO of OpenAI, is also excited about the prospect of putting data centers in orbit. Musk has an advantage over his peers because he already controls the launchers.
According to Axios, Musk plans to use SpaceX’s upcoming IPO to help fund his vision of using Starship to launch a constellation of computing satellites that can operate under constant sunlight, harvesting solar energy 24/7.
There are, however, many obstacles to realizing AI data centers in space, including the challenge of cooling high-powered computing in a vacuum. Musk’s comments about Tesla building “space-based AI computing” fit a familiar pattern: pitch an idea that seems far-fetched, then try to force it into reality.
