The leader of Tesla’s Dojo supercomputer project, Ganesh Venkataramanan, has left the company, dealing a blow to the automaker’s self-driving technology efforts. According to sources familiar with the matter, Venkataramanan departed Tesla last month after leading the Dojo project for the last five years.
The project is a pivotal part of Tesla’s self-driving technology, utilizing a supercomputer to train machine learning models behind the automaker’s self-driving systems. The system is designed to process data captured by vehicles rapidly, aiming to improve Tesla’s algorithms.
Following Venkataramanan’s departure, Peter Bannon, a former Apple Inc. executive and director at Tesla for the past seven years, has taken over the leadership of the Dojo project.
Tesla, led by CEO Elon Musk, has not yet responded to requests for comment regarding Venkataramanan’s departure and the leadership changes for the Dojo project.
The Dojo system is powered by a custom D1 chip designed by Venkataramanan, Bannon, and other industry veterans. The recently departed executive, who previously worked at Advanced Micro Devices Inc., played a significant role in setting up Tesla’s AI hardware and silicon teams in 2016.
Additionally, sources reported that Tesla recently installed hardware for Dojo at a centralized location in Palo Alto, California, shifting away from relying on multiple data centers in different locations.
The departure of Venkataramanan and at least one other group member has raised questions about the future of Tesla’s expensive and technologically advanced project. Analysts have previously suggested that Dojo could be a key competitive advantage for Tesla, with Morgan Stanley estimating it could add $500 billion to the company’s value.
Tesla had previously relied on supercomputers from Nvidia Corp. to power its AI-based systems, but Dojo is expected to compete with offerings from Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and IBM. Tesla announced in July that it had begun the production of the Dojo supercomputer system, manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd.
Venkataramanan’s departure follows another key AI player from Tesla, Andrej Karpathy, who led AI efforts at the company before departing and joining OpenAI last year. The news of these departures comes at a crucial time for Tesla as it continues to invest heavily in its AI and self-driving technology.