Elon Musk says Tesla’s rebooted Dojo3 will be dedicated to ‘space-based AI computation’

Elon Musk said over the long weekend that Tesla aims to resume work on Dojo3, the third-generation artificial intelligence chip that the electric car company previously abandoned. Only this time, Dojo3 won’t aim to train self-driving models on the ground. 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 has disbanded the team behind its Dojo supercomputer following the departure of Dojo leader Peter Bannon. About 20 Dojo workers also left to join DensityAI, a new AI infrastructure startup founded by former Dojo boss Ganesh Venkataramanan and former Tesla employees Bill Chang and Ben Floering.

At the time of the Dojo’s closure, Bloomberg reported that Tesla planned to increase its reliance on Nvidia and other partners like AMD for computing and Samsung for chip manufacturing, rather than continuing to develop its own custom silicon. Musk’s recent comments suggest that the strategy has changed again.

The billionaire executive and major Republican donor said in a post on X that the decision to revive Dojo was based on the state of its internal chip roadmap, noting that Tesla’s AI5 chip design was “in good shape.”

Tesla’s AI5 chip, made by TSMC, is 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 own AI6 chips that promise to power Tesla and Optimus cars, as well as enable high-performance AI training in data centers.

“AI7/Dojo3 will be dedicated to space-based AI computing,” Musk said on Sunday, describing the revived project as being closer to the moon.

To achieve this, Tesla is now preparing to rebuild the team it dismantled months ago. Musk used the same post to directly hire engineers, writing: “If you’re interested in working on what will be the world’s largest chips, send a note to AI_Chips@Tesla.com with three bullet points about the toughest technical problems you’ve solved.”

The timing of the announcement is notable. At CES 2026, Nvidia unveiled Alpamayo, an open source AI model for self-driving that directly challenges Tesla’s FSD software. Musk commented on

Musk and several other AI executives have argued that the future of data centers may lie off-planet, since terrestrial power grids are already strained to the limit. Axios recently reported that Musk’s rival and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is also excited about the prospect of putting data centers into orbit. Musk has an edge over his peers because he actually controls the launch vehicles.

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 could operate in continuous sunlight, harvesting solar energy 24/7.

However, there are many barriers to making AI data centers in space possible, not least the challenge of cooling high-power computing in a vacuum. Musk’s comments about Tesla building “space-based AI” fit a familiar pattern: pitch an idea that seems far-fetched, then try to turn it into reality.