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Tesla’s Elon Musk will be hosting an AI hackathon party at his house
Elon Musk announced that Tesla will be hosting an AI hackathon, together with the company’s artificial intelligence and autopilot team, at his house in four weeks’ time.
The Tesla chief announced his plans via Twitter on Sunday. Despite impressive numbers revealed during the Q4 2019 earnings call and update, Musk and his Tesla team are not resting on their laurels and remain focused on pursuing advancements to its neural network, which is in the center of Tesla’s goal of achieving a full self-driving vehicle.
During the recent Q4 earnings call, an investor asked the Tesla chief executive for updates on FSD.
“I think that’s looking like maybe it’s going to be couple of months from now. And what isn’t obvious regarding Autopilot and Full Self-Driving is just how much work has been going into improving the foundational elements of autonomy,” Musk said.
Tesla will hold a super fun AI party/hackathon at my house with the Tesla AI/autopilot team in about four weeks. Invitations going out soon.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2020
Musk continued to explain how the Tesla team is making great strides in labeling efficiency.
“…in terms of labeling, labeling with video in all eight cameras simultaneously. This is a really, I mean in terms of labeling efficiency, arguably like a three order of magnitude improvement in labeling efficiency. For those who know about this, it’s extremely fundamental, so that’s really great progress on that,” Musk said.
Tesla vehicles rely on a custom chip that boasts of 144 tera operations per second (TOPS) for its self-driving capabilities. This two-chip FSD computer works in tandem with LPDDR4 RAM modules that come with a peak bandwidth of 68 GB/s. There are also two neural network accelerators that work in tandem to process as much as 1TB of data per second. This setup is roughly three times faster, about 80%, and about 1.25 times more power-efficient than the previous hardware. It is also able to process about 2,300 frames per second compared to the 110 frames per second processed by Tesla’s Hardware 2.5.
In his series of tweets on Sunday, Musk also mentioned Tesla’s “Dojo” supercomputer, which is speculated to be capable of processing vast amounts of data to train the company’s neural network. Through active learning, Tesla curates the most useful video clips from its fleet of connected cars and train the neural net to recognize things that it did not previously know.
“Our networks learn from the most complicated and diverse scenarios in the world, iteratively sourced from our fleet of nearly 1M vehicles in real-time. A full build of Autopilot neural networks involves 48 networks that take 70,000 GPU hours to train. Together, they output 1,000 distinct tensors (predictions) at each timestep,” Tesla wrote on the Autopilot AI section of its website.
“At Tesla, using AI to solve self-driving isn’t just icing on the cake, it the cake” – @lexfridman
Join AI at Tesla! It reports directly to me & we meet/email/text almost every day. My actions, not just words, show how critically I view (benign) AI.https://t.co/iF97zvYZRz
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2020
The last major software update rolled out by Tesla allowed its vehicles to visualize more things while driving in inner-city streets. Teslas now render stoplights, stop signs, traffic cones, traffic pylons, and more.
With the upcoming AI hackathon, Tesla will get together with developers to seek out more efficient algorithms and overall improvements to the core logic for its Full Self-Driving suite through a time-boxed event. With fresh eyes working with the existing AI and autopilot team of Tesla, the carmaker may be able to accelerate the timeline and rollout of its full-featured Full Self-Driving suite sooner.
Further advances in FSD and its Autopilot feature will widen the gap between Tesla and its competitors and solidify the company’s position as one of the leading automakers in the world. These improvements will also take Tesla a step closer to the possibility of Robotaxis that they can deploy at scale.
The hackathon will also allow Tesla to fish for new AI talents to join the team. On Sunday, Musk also mentioned that the electric carmaker is looking for world-class chip designers and C++/C engineers for vehicle control and other functions of Tesla vehicles.
Musk reiterated that educational attainment is not important when joining Tesla but rather a clear understanding of how AI and neural networks function and the ability to build useful applications using that knowledge.
Elon Musk
Tesla Full Self-Driving’s newest behavior is the perfect answer to aggressive cars
According to a recent video, it now appears the suite will automatically pull over if there is a tailgater on your bumper, the most ideal solution for when a driver is riding your bumper.
Tesla Full Self-Driving appears to have a new behavior that is the perfect answer to aggressive drivers.
According to a recent video, it now appears the suite will automatically pull over if there is a tailgater on your bumper, the most ideal solution for when a driver is riding your bumper.
With FSD’s constantly-changing Speed Profiles, it seems as if this solution could help eliminate the need to tinker with driving modes from the person in the driver’s seat. This tends to be one of my biggest complaints from FSD at times.
A video posted on X shows a Tesla on Full Self-Driving pulling over to the shoulder on windy, wet roads after another car seemed to be following it quite aggressively. The car looks to have automatically sensed that the vehicle behind it was in a bit of a hurry, so FSD determined that pulling over and letting it by was the best idea:
Tesla appears to be implementing some sort of feature that will now pull over if someone is tailgating you to let the car by
Really cool feature, definitely get a lot of this from those who think they drive race cars
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) February 26, 2026
We can see from the clip that there was no human intervention to pull over to the side, as the driver’s hands are stationary and never interfere with the turn signal stalk.
This can be used to override some of the decisions FSD makes, and is a great way to get things back on track if the semi-autonomous functionality tries to do something that is either unneeded or not included in the routing on the in-car Nav.
FSD tends to move over for faster traffic on the interstate when there are multiple lanes. On two-lane highways, it will pass slower cars using the left lane. When faster traffic is behind a Tesla on FSD, the vehicle will move back over to the right lane, the correct behavior in a scenario like this.
Perhaps one of my biggest complaints at times with Full Self-Driving, especially from version to version, is how much tinkering Tesla does with Speed Profiles. One minute, they’re suitable for driving on local roads, the next, they’re either too fast or too slow.
When they are too slow, most of us just shift up into a faster setting, but at times, even that’s not enough, see below:
What has happened to Mad Max?
At one point it was going 32 in a 35. Traffic ahead had pulled away considerably https://t.co/bjKvaMVTNX pic.twitter.com/aaZSWmLu5v
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) January 24, 2026
There are times when it feels like it would be suitable for the car to just pull over and let the vehicle that is traveling behind pass. This, at least up until this point, it appears, was something that required human intervention.
Now, it looks like Tesla is trying to get FSD to a point where it just knows that it should probably get out of the way.
Elon Musk
Tesla Megapack powers $1.1B AI data center project in Brazil
By integrating Tesla’s Megapack systems, the facility will function not only as a major power consumer but also as a grid-supporting asset.
Tesla’s Megapack battery systems will be deployed as part of a 400MW AI data center campus in Uberlândia, Brazil. The initiative is described as one of Latin America’s largest AI infrastructure projects.
The project is being led by RT-One, which confirmed that the facility will integrate Tesla Megapack battery energy storage systems (BESS) as part of a broader industrial alliance that includes Hitachi Energy, Siemens, ABB, HIMOINSA, and Schneider Electric. The project is backed by more than R$6 billion (approximately $1.1 billion) in private capital.
According to RT-One, the data center is designed to operate on 100% renewable energy while also reinforcing regional grid stability.
“Brazil generates abundant energy, particularly from renewable sources such as solar and wind. However, high renewable penetration can create grid stability challenges,” RT-One President Fernando Palamone noted in a post on LinkedIn. “Managing this imbalance is one of the country’s growing infrastructure priorities.”
By integrating Tesla’s Megapack systems, the facility will function not only as a major power consumer but also as a grid-supporting asset.
“The facility will be capable of absorbing excess electricity when supply is high and providing stabilization services when the grid requires additional support. This approach enhances resilience, improves reliability, and contributes to a more efficient use of renewable generation,” Palamone added.
The model mirrors approaches used in energy-intensive regions such as California and Texas, where large battery systems help manage fluctuations tied to renewable energy generation.
The RT-One President recently visited Tesla’s Megafactory in Lathrop, California, where Megapacks are produced, as part of establishing the partnership. He thanked the Tesla team, including Marcel Dall Pai, Nicholas Reale, and Sean Jones, for supporting the collaboration in his LinkedIn post.
Elon Musk
Starlink powers Europe’s first satellite-to-phone service with O2 partnership
The service initially supports text messaging along with apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Google Maps and weather tools.
Starlink is now powering Europe’s first commercial satellite-to-smartphone service, as Virgin Media O2 launches a space-based mobile data offering across the UK.
The new O2 Satellite service uses Starlink’s low-Earth orbit network to connect regular smartphones in areas without terrestrial coverage, expanding O2’s reach from 89% to 95% of Britain’s landmass.
Under the rollout, compatible Samsung devices automatically connect to Starlink satellites when users move beyond traditional mobile coverage, according to Reuters.
The service initially supports text messaging along with apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Google Maps and weather tools. O2 is pricing the add-on at £3 per month.
By leveraging Starlink’s satellite infrastructure, O2 can deliver connectivity in remote and rural regions without building additional ground towers. The move represents another step in Starlink’s push beyond fixed broadband and into direct-to-device mobile services.
Virgin Media O2 chief executive Lutz Schuler shared his thoughts about the Starlink partnership. “By launching O2 Satellite, we’ve become the first operator in Europe to launch a space-based mobile data service that, overnight, has brought new mobile coverage to an area around two-thirds the size of Wales for the first time,” he said.
Satellite-based mobile connectivity is gaining traction globally. In the U.S., T-Mobile has launched a similar satellite-to-cell offering. Meanwhile, Vodafone has conducted satellite video call tests through its partnership with AST SpaceMobile last year.
For Starlink, the O2 agreement highlights how its network is increasingly being integrated into national telecom systems, enabling standard smartphones to connect directly to satellites without specialized hardware.
Tesla Full Self-Driving’s newest behavior is the perfect answer to aggressive cars
Tesla Megapack powers $1.1B AI data center project in Brazil
