Something is happening in the Musk empire — and when all the puzzle pieces fall into place, his companies will become a truly global superpower.
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Elon Musk recently announced that he is reviving Project Dojo 3, aimed at developing a supercomputer for AI training and inference without relying on Nvidia chips.
In its first iteration, the project focused on developing a chip to compete with Nvidia — a task that proved far more complex than anticipated. In its second iteration, Musk cancelled the project and declared it had reached a dead end. This time, he is giving it a new purpose: combining thousands of processing chips to create a supercomputer that will operate in outer space.
In parallel, it was reported yesterday (Tuesday) that xAI, Musk's AI company, is being acquired by SpaceX, his space company that also owns Starlink. All of this comes against the backdrop of a planned mega-IPO for SpaceX at a valuation of more than one trillion dollars.
The timing of all these events is no coincidence — it is part of a much larger story.
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Tesla is developing small, highly energy-efficient AI chips for its vehicles.
The new chip in the series is called AI5, and it is expected to reach the market over the coming year.
This chip will deliver a significant leap in performance and processing capability compared to the current generation, while maintaining low power consumption.
Beyond Tesla vehicles, it will also power the company's autonomous taxis — Robotaxi — as well as Optimus, the humanoid robot the company is developing.
The Dojo 3 supercomputer will rely on a combination of thousands of AI5 processors working in concert, delivering aggregate computing power that rivals Nvidia server performance — at higher efficiency.
It will be launched into space in the form of hundreds or thousands of small satellites, carried aboard SpaceX rockets, communicating with one another via laser beams.
Placing the servers in space will save several years of regulatory processes required to build data centers on Earth, and they will draw on unlimited solar energy and passive cooling — making them extremely inexpensive to operate.
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Once these moves are complete, all the puzzle pieces will come together to form an ecosystem with no rivals.
Optimus robots, Robotaxis, and Tesla vehicles will collect vast amounts of data on the ground and transmit it for processing to the company's servers orbiting in space.
Those servers will be launched aboard SpaceX vehicles and will run on free, clean energy from the sun.
The models trained in space will return to devices on Earth as software updates that enhance their capabilities — and the cycle will repeat, again and again.
The combination of in-house chip manufacturing, launch capability, and a network of data-collecting devices is unmatched at the moment, and it may well make Musk's artificial intelligence the most profitable in the world.
In the video: Tesla's Robotaxi | Credit: Tesla.
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👋 Hi, I'm Shlomo Strauss — follow me for more content on science and technology.