The comment marked Musk’s first public confirmation since the project was paused last year.
- Musk said Tesla has resumed work on its Dojo 3 project after the AI5 chip design reached a stable stage.
- The CEO outlined Tesla’s AI chip roadmap, including AI4, AI5 and AI6 for vehicles, Optimus and data center applications.
- Tesla is currently sourcing AI chips through its long-term agreement with Samsung.
Tesla Inc. shares fell nearly 3% in premarket trading on Tuesday even after CEO Elon Musk said the company has restarted work on its Dojo 3 initiative, its in-house AI training supercomputer, following progress on its next-generation AI chip design.
Dojo 3 Work Restarts
Musk confirmed the update on X, saying Tesla would resume development of Dojo 3 now that its AI5 chip design has reached a stable stage.
“Now that the AI5 chip design is in good shape, Tesla will restart work on Dojo3,” Musk wrote. Musk said Tesla is hiring engineers to work on what he described as “the highest volume chips in the world.” The comment marked Musk’s first public confirmation since the project was paused last year.
AI Chip Roadmap In Focus
Musk’s post followed a series of recent updates outlining Tesla’s broader AI chip roadmap. In a separate post on X, Musk said the AI4 chip alone would achieve self-driving safety levels well above human drivers, while AI5 would make vehicles “almost perfect” and significantly enhance Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot program. He added that AI6 would be focused on Optimus and data center applications.
In response to a user suggesting that restarting Dojo implied Nvidia chips were too expensive, Musk replied that building large-scale AI systems would be infeasible without lower-cost chips.
Musk On AI Chip Math
Musk also weighed in on technical discussions about chip architecture, responding to commentary on the floating-point and integer representations used in AI computing.
“The distinction between float and int diminishes as the number of bits decreases,” Musk said on X. “In the limit of 1 bit, there is no difference.” He added that at lower bit levels, the number of possible outcomes becomes limited, allowing designers to define how those outcomes are used in computation.
Tesla’s AI Chip Supply Chain
Tesla is currently leaning on Samsung Electronics for chip production. The companies signed a $16.5 billion agreement last year under which Samsung will supply AI chips through 2033.
A new facility in Texas is expected to handle the manufacturing of Tesla’s AI6 chip, providing an additional production hub outside Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., its usual supplier.
During Tesla’s second-quarter 2025 earnings call, Musk said the company was considering merging the Dojo 3 chip with the AI6 inference chip. “Thinking about Dojo3 and the AI6 inference chip, it seems like intuitively, we want to try to find convergence there, where it’s basically the same chip,” Musk said on the July 23 call.
Dojo’s Role In Tesla’s AI Strategy
Dojo was originally designed to train machine-learning systems used in Autopilot, Full Self-Driving, and Optimus by processing large volumes of vehicle camera data using Tesla’s custom D1 chip.
Musk previously described Dojo as a high-risk project, saying in January 2024 that while the potential payoff could be large, it was not a high-probability outcome. The project was shut down last year as Tesla navigated internal changes.
How Did Stocktwits Users React?
On Stocktwits, retail sentiment for Tesla was ‘neutral’ amid ‘low’ message volume.
Tesla’s stock has risen 6% over the past 12 months.
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