Tesla Dojo Supercomputer data center, Buffalo, New York

Tesla's plan to put $500 million of its Dojo supercomputer, including a cluster of servers, at its state-owned factory in South Buffalo, in Erie County, New York, ended when Elon Musk shut Dojo down in August 2025 to focus on Cortex, a supercomputer at Tesla's plant in Austin, Texas. The Dojo data center pledge was part of a pending update to Tesla's lease on the Buffalo factory, and its collapse set the talks back.

Dojo was to run on specially designed chips and analyze data from more than a million Tesla vehicles to help develop the company's self-driving software. "They backed away from the Dojo and that was a problem for us because that was a big part of why we were coming to this extension of the agreement," said Kevin Younis, chief operating officer of Empire State Development, the state's economic development agency.

Younis said the state still wants Tesla to commit to some kind of computer in Buffalo, and that Tesla is doing a supercomputer with somebody else's chips instead of its own. In February 2026, Tesla said it has invested $350 million in supercomputers on the site.

The state built the factory for almost $1 billion as the centerpiece of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Buffalo Billion program and rents it to Tesla for $1 a year in exchange for a promise of 3,460 jobs across the state. The plant was meant to make solar panels and mostly makes chargers for electric vehicles.

In February 2026, Tesla reported it had hired more than 300 more people in Buffalo and had met its jobs target at the end of 2025, with 2,399 full-time workers at the factory and 1,060 at other Tesla sites in the state. Assemblymember Pat Burke said he is skeptical of the jobs report, which the state had not yet verified.

Critics want the state to walk away or enforce penalties. Assemblymember Micah Lasher has called for the state to collect $41.2 million in penalties for Tesla's past shortfalls, and John Kaehny of Reinvent Albany wants the state to seek proposals from other possible tenants. Kaehny said the point of the deal was manufacturing jobs, "not subsidizing the sale and maintenance of Tesla vehicles."

Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan has pushed for a payment in lieu of taxes to the city. "The original vision may have changed, but we still expect Tesla to do everything it can to maximize jobs and investment here in Buffalo," Ryan said.

The most recent public draft of the lease update, from January 2025, would extend the lease five years to 2034 and raise the rent to $2 million a year and eventually $5 million. Empire State Development president Hope Knight said the state was still weighing whether to fine Tesla.