Elon Musk's Tesla loads up on AI hardware to improve self-driving software

Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said he plans to buy chips from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. as part of a spending spree on computing hardware to handle artificial intelligence.

After saying on his X social media platform that Tesla will spend more than $500 million on Nvidia Corp. hardware this year, Musk was asked if he would also buy chips from AMD. “Yes,” the billionaire replied.

Nvidia is the current leader in so-called AI accelerators — processors suited to the data-intensive requirements of the technology — but rivals like AMD are pushing into the market. AMD unveiled a lineup called the MI300 last month that it said will be able to run AI software faster than competitors can.

AMD shares briefly climbed more than 1% after-hours Friday following the remarks. They had been down earlier in extended trading.

Musk has said that Tesla plans to invest more than $1 billion on an effort called Project Dojo by the end of 2024. Dojo refers to an in-house supercomputer designed to handle massive amounts of data, including video from Tesla cars needed to create autonomous-driving software.

The strategy is to use both Nvidia technology and its homegrown efforts.

“We’re pursuing the dual path of Nvidia and Dojo,” Musk said during Tesla’s earnings call on Wednesday. “But I would think of Dojo as a long shot. It’s a long shot worth taking because the payoff is potentially very high.”