TechCrunch Industry News Elon Musk confirms shutdown of Tesla Dojo, ‘an evolutionary dead end’ ... and more tech news
Aug 12, 2025
Elon Musk announces the shutdown of Tesla's Dojo, calling it an 'evolutionary dead end' as the company pivots towards AI-5 and AI-6 chips. In a surprising turn, Nvidia and AMD plan to sell high-end AI chips to China while cutting the U.S. government in on the profits. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg's real estate dominance in Palo Alto raises eyebrows, as he invests over $110 million to build his own expansive compound, attracting mixed reactions from the neighborhood.
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Dojo Project Declared A Dead End
- Elon Musk said Tesla shut down Dojo because all paths converged to AI6 and Dojo 2 became an evolutionary dead end.
- Tesla will focus resources on AI-5 and AI-6 chips to reduce duplication and complexity across projects.
Shift To External Foundries
- Tesla is shelving its in-house D2 chip and shifting to AI-5 and AI-6 chips made by TSMC and Samsung.
- Musk argues consolidating around AI-5/AI-6 simplifies networking and lowers supercomputer costs drastically.
AI-5 Versus AI-6 Roles
- AI-5 will focus on inference for Full Self-Driving while AI-6 targets both onboard inference and large-scale training.
- Musk suggests putting many AI-5/AI-6 chips on a board to reduce cabling and cost for clusters.