New York Governor Kathy Hochul held a hearing on economic developments in the state on Friday. During the hearing, she announced that Tesla plans to build its next Dojo supercomputing cluster at its Gigafactory in Buffalo. The project is expected to account for an investment of $500 million. Additionally, a separate artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputer is being built at the State University of New York (SUNY).
Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed the plans to build the supercomputing cluster, but clarified that the $500 million amount would only account for a smaller Nvidia system. He emphasized that the “table stakes” for being a competitive player in AI were “at least several billion dollars per year.”
Governor Hochul did not provide a timeline for the installation plans. She detailed $275 million in funding from a state grant and over $400 million in public and private funding going toward the “Empire AI” program at SUNY. In addition, she mentioned that the global AI market has reached a total value of about $150 billion, but it is expected to balloon to $1.3 trillion in just a few years.
Beyond Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta systems, the Dojo supercomputing cluster is expected to have several potential applications and is anticipated to become one of the world’s most prolific computing clusters. The full video of Governor Hochul’s briefing can be watched on *WGRZ*, with her statements on Tesla around 33 minutes into the video.