Elon Musk doesn’t want Tesla to be just an automaker. He wants Tesla to be an AI company, one that’s figured out how to make cars drive themselves.
Crucial to that mission was Dojo, a custom-built supercomputer designed by Tesla to train its Full Self-Driving (FSD) neural networks. FSD isn’t actually fully self-driving; it can perform some automated driving tasks, but still requires an attentive human behind the wheel. But Tesla thinks with more data, more compute power and more training, it can cross the threshold from almost self-driving to full self-driving.
And that’s where Dojo was supposed to come in.
Musk teased Dojo for years and ramped up discussions about the supercomputer throughout 2024. But Dojo is now out, and another supercomputer called Cortex has entered the chat.
Below is a timeline of Dojo mentions and promises. Check out this explainer on what Dojo for even more information on what it was, why it mattered, and what comes next.
2019
First mentions of Dojo
April 22 – At Tesla’s Autonomy Day, the automaker had its AI team onstage to talk about Autopilot and Full Self-Driving, and the AI powering them both. The company shares information about Tesla’s custom-built chips that are designed specifically for neural networks and self-driving cars.
During the event, Musk teases Dojo, revealing that it’s a supercomputer for training AI. He also notes that all Tesla cars being produced at the time would have all hardware necessary for full self-driving and only needed a software update.
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