Buffalo factory to receive $500M from Tesla for Dojo supercomputer project

Tesla plans to invest $500 million in constructing a “Dojo” supercomputer at its Buffalo, New York factory, as announced by the state’s governor, Kathy Hochul, during a recent news conference. This comes shortly after CEO Elon Musk referred to the project as a “long shot.”

According to Governor Kathy Hochul’s office, Tesla has chosen to invest $500 million in constructing a “Dojo” supercomputer at its Buffalo, New York factory, citing the state’s reliable power supply, a strong talent pool, and available space for the project.

The Dojo supercomputer, introduced during Tesla’s “AI Day” event in 2021, aims to advance the company’s pursuit of developing a self-driving car. Tesla plans to use the supercomputer to process large amounts of video data from its electric vehicles, training the AI that powers its advanced Full Self-Driving Beta software. Elon Musk mentioned last year that Tesla intends to allocate “well over $1 billion” to the Dojo project.

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This move represents a shift in Tesla’s priorities for the Buffalo location, initially named “Gigafactory 2.” Acquired from SolarCity in 2016, the factory faced challenges in producing Solar Roof tiles at scale, leading to Panasonic’s withdrawal in 2020. Tesla then shifted focus to employing workers for labeling training data for its Autopilot software.

Musk acknowledges the high-risk nature of the Dojo supercomputer project, describing it as a “long shot bet” with the potential for a significant payoff, possibly in the “multi-hundred-billion-dollar level.” Despite receiving positive attention during Governor Hochul’s press conference, Musk downplayed the $500 million figure in a social media post on X, emphasizing that Tesla would spend more on Nvidia hardware in 2024.

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He clarified that while $500 million is a substantial amount, the competitive landscape in AI requires several billion dollars annually, and Tesla’s commitment goes beyond that to stay competitive.