(Reuters) -Tesla’s Dojo supercomputer project lead Ganesh Venkataramanan has left the company, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday citing people familiar with the matter.
Peter Bannon, a former Apple executive and director at Tesla for the last seven years, is now leading the project, the report said.
The Dojo supercomputer was designed to process vast amounts of data and video from Tesla cars to train the automaker’s autonomous-driving software.
The world’s most valuable automaker did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Venkataramanan no longer appeared in Tesla’s internal directories, the report added citing a source.
Tesla started production of the supercomputer to train artificial intelligence (AI) models for self-driving cars in July and plans to spend more than $1 billion on Dojo through the next year.
Morgan Stanley in September said Tesla’s Dojo supercomputer could power a near $600 billion surge in the company’s market value by helping speed up its foray into robotaxis and software services.
Dojo can open up new addressable markets that “extend well beyond selling vehicles at a fixed price,” Morgan Stanley analysts led by Adam Jonas had said.
(Reporting by Chavi Mehta and Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel and Krishna Chandra Eluri)
