Before Tesla Layoffs, Musk Cranked Up Pressure Amid Sales Slump

When Elon Musk arrived at Tesla’s Austin, Texas, factory last week to tour an expansion project on the south side of the 10-million-square-foot facility, he was furious.

The expansion was part of a high-priority project for Musk: a data center for Dojo, a supercomputer Tesla is developing. Dojo is necessary to make full self-driving capabilities, powered by artificial intelligence, a reality for Tesla’s electric vehicles. But on that day in mid-April, the building expansion was little more than a metal skeleton, still missing most of a roof and ground floor due to construction delays made worse by bad weather and delivery issues, according to two former Tesla employees.

Another hitch in the construction: The ground floor couldn't be laid until The Boring Company, Musk’s tunneling startup, completed a subterranean road under the structure, which Tesla hopes its pickup trucks—the Cybertruck—will one day use to autonomously ferry themselves to another part of the sprawling campus, one of the people said. In response to the delays, Musk fired Amir Mirshahi, the construction project’s director of infrastructure, said the two former employees, who had been briefed on his departure.