Elon Musk is on a mission to construct new supercomputers. Because the CEO of Tesla and his new synthetic intelligence startup xAI, the tech titan has large plans for the way synthetic intelligence may help to supercharge his companies.

In January, he wrote on X that Tesla needs to be seen as an AI/robotics firm fairly than a automotive firm. Tesla’s custom-built supercomputer named Dojo is essential to this transformation. Tesla has stated it plans to spend $500 million to construct the supercomputer in Buffalo, New York. Tesla can also be constructing one other supercomputer cluster, known as Cortex, on the firm’s headquarters in Austin, Texas.

Dojo will course of and prepare AI fashions utilizing the massive quantities of video and information captured by Tesla automobiles. The aim is to enhance Tesla’s suite of driver help options, which the corporate calls Autopilot, and its extra sturdy Full Self-Driving or FSD system. Subscriptions to Tesla’s FSD options price $99 a month and embody computerized lane adjustments, computerized parking and computerized stopping for visitors lights and cease indicators.

“They’ve offered what’s it, 5 million plus automobiles. Every a type of automobiles usually has eight cameras plus in it. And in case you assume then that these automobiles are driving round, let’s simply say 10,000 miles a 12 months on common, they’re streaming all of that video again to Tesla,” says Steven Dickens, chief expertise advisor on the Futurum Group. “So what can they do with that coaching set? Clearly they will develop Full Self-Driving and so they’re getting near that.”

Regardless of their names, neither Autopilot nor FSD make Tesla automobiles autonomous and require energetic driver supervision, as Tesla states on its website. Previously, the corporate has garnered scrutiny from regulators who say that Tesla falsely marketed the capabilities of its Autopilot and FSD techniques. However reaching full autonomy is crucial for Tesla, whose sky-high valuation is basically depending on bringing robotaxis to market, some analysts say.

The corporate reported lackluster results in its newest earnings report and has fallen behind different automakers engaged on autonomous automobile expertise. These embody Alphabet-owned Waymo, which is already commercially working absolutely autonomous taxis in a number of U.S. cities, GM’s Cruise and Amazon’s Zoox. In China, rivals embody Didi and Baidu.

Tesla hopes Dojo, which Musk says has been operating duties for Tesla since 2023, will change that. A Tesla robotaxi occasion initially scheduled for August is now anticipated to happen in early October.

Dojo can be helpful for coaching Tesla’s humanoid robotic, Optimus, which the corporate plans to make use of in its factories beginning subsequent 12 months. Musk has stated that Tesla plans to spend $10 billion this year on AI.

Musk can also be betting on supercomputers to run his new AI enterprise xAI. Musk launched xAI in 2023 to develop massive language fashions and AI merchandise, like its chatbot Grok, as a substitute for AI instruments created by OpenAI, Microsoft and Google.

Regardless of being one in all its founders, Elon Musk left OpenAI in 2018 and has since change into one of many firm’s harshest critics. In June, it was introduced that xAI would construct a supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee to coach Grok. In early September, Musk revealed {that a} portion of the Memphis supercomputer, known as Colossus, was already on-line.

To study extra about Elon Musk’s supercomputer plans, watch the video.