Tesla Reportedly Shuts Down Dojo Supercomputer Team, Reassigns Workers

Tesla vehicles line a parking area at the company's Fremont, Calif., factory on Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
Tesla vehicles line a parking area at the company's Fremont, Calif., factory on Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
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Tesla Reportedly Shuts Down Dojo Supercomputer Team, Reassigns Workers

Tesla vehicles line a parking area at the company's Fremont, Calif., factory on Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
Tesla vehicles line a parking area at the company's Fremont, Calif., factory on Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has ordered to shut down its Dojo supercomputer team, with team leader Peter Bannon departing the company, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The Dojo supercomputer was designed around custom training chips to process vast amounts of data and video from Tesla EVs to train the automaker's autonomous-driving software.

Tesla did not reply to a Reuters request for comment. CEO Elon Musk said on X that it didn't make sense for Tesla to divide its resources and scale two different AI chips.

Over the past year, Tesla, amid a company-wide restructuring, has seen multiple executive departures and thousands of job cuts. The company has redirected its focus to

AI-driven self-driving technology and robotics, with CEO Elon Musk pursuing an integration strategy across his business empire.

In March, xAI acquired the social media platform X for $33 billion to bolster its chatbot training capabilities, while Tesla integrated the Grok chatbot into its vehicles.

The automaker also plans to increase its reliance on external technology partners such as Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices for compute, and Samsung Electronics for chip manufacturing, as per the Bloomberg report.

Last month, Samsung secured a $16.5 billion deal to supply AI chips to Tesla, expected to power self-driving cars, humanoid robots and data centers.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk earlier said that Samsung's new chip factory in Taylor, Texas would make Tesla's next-generation AI6 chip.

While no timeline was provided for AI6 chip production, Musk has previously said that next-generation AI5 chips will be produced at the end of 2026, suggesting AI6 would follow.

"The Tesla AI5, AI6 and subsequent chips will be excellent for inference and at least pretty good for training. All effort is focused on that", Musk said in an X post late Thursday.

Musk also said that in a supercomputer cluster, it would make sense to put many AI5/AI6 chips. "One could call that Dojo 3, I suppose", he said.

The Dojo team recently lost about 20 workers to newly formed DensityAI, and the remaining workers are being reassigned to other data center and compute projects within Tesla, the Bloomberg report said.

Nvidia declined to comment on the Bloomberg report, while AMD and Samsung did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.



Google Warns Staff with US Visas against International Travel

FILE PHOTO: The Google logo is displayed during a press conference in Berlin, Germany, November 11, 2025. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: The Google logo is displayed during a press conference in Berlin, Germany, November 11, 2025. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner/File Photo
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Google Warns Staff with US Visas against International Travel

FILE PHOTO: The Google logo is displayed during a press conference in Berlin, Germany, November 11, 2025. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: The Google logo is displayed during a press conference in Berlin, Germany, November 11, 2025. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner/File Photo

Alphabet's Google has advised some employees on US visas to avoid international travel due to delays at embassies, Business Insider reported on Friday, citing an internal email.

The email, sent by the company's outside counsel BAL Immigration Law on Thursday, warned staff who need a visa ⁠stamp to re-enter the United States not to leave the country because visa processing times have lengthened, the report said.

Google did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Some US embassies and consulates face visa ⁠appointment delays of up to 12 months, the memo said, warning that international travel will "risk an extended stay outside the US", according to the report.

The administration of President Donald Trump this month announced increased vetting of applicants for H-1B visas for highly skilled workers, including screening social media accounts.

The H-1B visa program, widely used by the US ⁠technology sector to hire skilled workers from India and China, has been under the spotlight after the Trump administration imposed a $100,000 fee for new applications this year.

In September, Google's parent company Alphabet had strongly advised its employees to avoid international travel and urged H-1B visa holders to remain in the US, according to an email seen by Reuters.


AI Boom Drives Data-Center Dealmaking to Record High, Says Report

AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand are placed on computer motherboard in this illustration created on June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand are placed on computer motherboard in this illustration created on June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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AI Boom Drives Data-Center Dealmaking to Record High, Says Report

AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand are placed on computer motherboard in this illustration created on June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand are placed on computer motherboard in this illustration created on June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

Global data-center dealmaking surged to a record high through November this year, driven by an insatiable demand for ​computing infrastructure to meet the boom in artificial intelligence usage.

Data from S&P Global Market Intelligence showed that there were more than 100 data center transactions during the period, with the total value sitting just under $61 billion.

WHY ‌IT'S IMPORTANT

Interest ‌in data centers ‌has ⁠swelled ​this ‌year as tech giants and AI hyperscalers have planned billions of dollars in spending to scale up infrastructure.

AI-related companies have powered much of the gains in US stocks this year, but concerns over lofty ⁠valuations and debt-fueled spending have also sparked worries ‌over how quickly corporates can ‍turn the investments ‍into profits.

BY THE NUMBERS

Including M&As, asset ‍sales and equity investments, data center investments hit nearly $61 billion through the end of November, already surpassing 2024's record high $60.81 billion.

Since ​2019, data center dealmaking in the US and Canada totaled about $160 billion, ⁠with Asia-Pacific reaching nearly $40 billion and Europe $24.2 billion.

GRAPHIC KEY QUOTE

"High interest comes from financial sponsors, which are attracted by the risk/reward profile of such assets. Private equity firms are eager buyers but are generally reluctant sellers, creating an environment where availability for sale of high-quality data center assets is scarce," said Iuri ‌Struta, TMT analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence.


YouTube Down for Thousands of US Users, Downdetector Shows

The YouTube app icon on a smartphone in this illustration taken October 27, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
The YouTube app icon on a smartphone in this illustration taken October 27, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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YouTube Down for Thousands of US Users, Downdetector Shows

The YouTube app icon on a smartphone in this illustration taken October 27, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
The YouTube app icon on a smartphone in this illustration taken October 27, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

Google's YouTube was ​down for thousands of users in the ‌United ‌States ‌on ⁠Friday, ​according to ‌Downdetector.com, Reuters reported.

There were more than 10,800 reports of ⁠issues with ‌the streaming ‍platform ‍as of ‍08:15 a.m. ET, according to Downdetector, ​which tracks outages by ⁠collating status reports from a number of sources.

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Outage ‌reports exceeded 1,300 ‍in ‍Canada as of ‍8:29 a.m. ET; and more than 3,000 in the UK of ​8:30 a.m. ET.

YouTube did not immediately ⁠respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The actual number of affected users may differ from what's shown on Downdetector because these reports are user-submitted.