Tesla shatters Elon Musk’s most ambitious dream

Tesla, a pioneer in electric mobility, has abruptly ended its Dojo supercomputer project.

Revealed by Reuters, this decision by Tesla’s board undermines Elon Musk’s strategy to transform Tesla into a technology giant, beyond just electric vehicles.

Since the launch of the Model S, Tesla has established itself as a global reference. However, in recent years, it has lost its dominant market position in volume to competitors like BYD. Noticing that the electric vehicle market was maturing, Musk chose to diversify his activities into areas like autonomous driving and artificial intelligence. Unveiled in 2021, Dojo was to be the cornerstone of this strategy. A supercomputer designed in-house to train AI algorithms for Robotaxis and the humanoid robot Optimus.

The goal was clear: to reduce Tesla’s dependence on suppliers like Nvidia or AMD and to have an in-house “brain,” among the most powerful in the world, capable of processing vast amounts of data. However, reality turned out to be much more complex. Technical challenges and a development cost that could exceed 10 billion dollars ultimately made the project untenable.

Tesla loses independence

The abandonment of Dojo has immediate consequences. Tesla will now have to rely entirely on third-party hardware to train its AI systems, losing the strategic advantage it sought. Additionally, the program’s head, Peter Bannon, has left the company along with about twenty engineers, who have joined DensityAI, a startup founded by former Tesla executives specializing in technology and AI.

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For Musk, who viewed Dojo as a “risky yet potentially very lucrative” bet, this failure is a major setback. It illustrates the limits of grand ambitions in the face of the complexity of cutting-edge projects, where even an innovative player like Tesla can find itself… Ippon.

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