Tesla's Dojo Project Faces Uncertainty After Chief's Departure

 

 Tesla's Dojo Project Faces Uncertainty After Chief's Departure

The sudden departure of Ganesh Venkataramanan, the lead of Tesla's Dojo supercomputer project, has sent shockwaves through the automotive and AI industries. Venkataramanan, who has been leading the Dojo project for the past five years, parted ways with the company last month, leaving insiders speculating about the setback it might cause in the self-driving technology efforts of the automaker.

Peter Bannon, previously with Apple Inc. and a director at Tesla for the past seven years, has now taken over the reins of this ambitious project. Dojo, designed as Tesla's proprietary supercomputer, aims to train machine learning models behind the self-driving systems of electric vehicles. It collects data from Tesla's fleet of cars and rapidly processes it to enhance the company's algorithms. Analysts had earlier predicted that Dojo could potentially add an extra $500 billion to Tesla's market value.

Elon Musk has expressed Tesla's intention to invest over $1 billion in the Dojo project by the end of 2024. The Tesla leader had initiated the first projects for supercomputers explicitly for computation in 2019.

Dojo is a potent D1 chip designed by Venkataramanan, Bannon, and several other prominent names in the Silicon industry. Venkataramanan previously worked at Advanced Micro Devices Inc., while Tesla boasts several other experienced designers in chip design. Recently, hardware for Dojo was also installed at a central location in Palo Alto, California.

Reports suggest that until recently, Venkataramanan was not visible among Tesla's internal directors. At least one other member of the group has also departed. The exact reasons behind these departures remain unclear but are believed to be linked to expensive and technically challenging new projects.

Previously, Tesla relied on Nvidia Corp.'s supercomputers to empower its AI-based systems, but now it faces competition from Dojo's counterparts offered by Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and IBM. In July, Tesla announced the commencement of the Dojo supercomputer system's production, developed in collaboration with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the same chipmaker used by Apple.

Last year, another key figure in Tesla's AI efforts, Andrej Karpathy, known for leading AI initiatives within the company, departed to join OpenAI.

The departure of Venkataramanan has left a void in Tesla's Dojo project, raising questions about the future of its self-driving technology ambitions and the direction of its AI initiatives.