Tesla will spend $500 million to construct considered one of its so-called “Dojo” supercomputers at its Buffalo, New York manufacturing unit, the state’s governor Kathy Hochul stated Friday throughout a information convention simply days after CEO Elon Musk referred to as the undertaking a “long shot.”
Tesla’s resolution was “informed by New York’s reliable power supply, strong talent pipeline and availability of usable space for the project,” in line with Hochul’s workplace.
Dojo, which was first introduced at Tesla’s “AI Day” occasion in 2021, is a supercomputer meant to assist advance the corporate’s still-unrealized purpose of constructing a self-driving automobile. Tesla plans to make use of the supercomputer to course of reams of video knowledge that come off of its electrical autos as a way to prepare the AI that now powers its most superior driver help software program, which it calls Full Self-Driving Beta. Musk stated last year that Tesla plans to spend “well over $1 billion” on Dojo.
Bringing the Dojo undertaking to Buffalo is the newest shift in Tesla’s priorities for the situation, which has changed into something of a boondoggle for New York state. As soon as dubbed “Gigafactory 2,” Tesla took over the manufacturing unit from SolarCity when it acquired the troubled photo voltaic panel firm in 2016. The state had already dedicated $750 million to the plant by that time. Tesla promised to make Photo voltaic Roof tiles there, however struggled to provide the product at scale. Its associate, Panasonic, pulled out of the plant in 2020, and Tesla pivoted to using individuals who labeled training data for its less-advanced Autopilot software program.
Musk said final April that he believed the Dojo supercomputer undertaking was a “long shot bet” that would “pay off in a very, very big way… in the multi-hundred-billion-dollar level.”
He reiterated the purpose this week on a name with analysts. “It’s not, like, a sure thing at all, It’s a high-risk, high-payoff program,” he stated. “We are scaling it up, and we have plans for Dojo 1.5, Dojo 2, Dojo 3, and whatnot. So, you know, I think it’s got potential, but the kind of size enough high risk, high payoff.”
Whereas the $500 million funding obtained cheers throughout Hochul’s press convention, Musk downplayed the determine in a social media put up on X, noting the corporate would spend far extra money on Nvidia {hardware} in 2024.
“The governor is correct that this is a Dojo Supercomputer, but $500M, while obviously a large sum of money, is only equivalent to a 10k H100 system from Nvidia,” Musk wrote within the put up on X. “Tesla will spend more than that on Nvidia hardware this year. The table stakes for being competitive in AI are at least several billion dollars per year at this point.”
