Tesla's Dojo Supercomputer Project Lead Departs, Peter Bannon Takes Over

According to Yahoo News, Ganesh Venkataramanan, the project lead for Tesla Inc.'s Dojo supercomputer, has left the company, posing a challenge to the automaker's self-driving technology efforts. Venkataramanan, who led the Dojo project for five years, left the electric vehicle (EV) maker last month. Peter Bannon, a former Apple Inc. executive and director at Tesla for the past seven years, is now leading the project. The Dojo system is a Tesla-designed supercomputer created to train the machine learning models behind the EV maker's self-driving systems. The computer processes data captured by vehicles to improve the company's algorithms rapidly. Analysts have said that Dojo could be a key competitive advantage, and earlier this year, Morgan Stanley estimated it could add $500 billion to Tesla's value. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has stated that the carmaker plans to invest more than $1 billion in Project Dojo by the end of 2024. The Tesla leader first shared plans for the supercomputer in 2019 before formally announcing it in 2021. Dojo is powered by a custom D1 chip designed by Venkataramanan, Bannon, and other big names from the silicon industry. Venkataramanan previously worked at Advanced Micro Devices Inc., and Tesla has several other veterans from the chip designer on staff. The recently departed executive set up Tesla's AI hardware and silicon teams in 2016. In recent weeks, Tesla also installed hardware for Dojo at a centralized location in Palo Alto, California. Dojo has relied on multiple data centers in different locations. As of Wednesday, Venkataramanan was no longer appearing in Tesla's internal directories, and at least one other member of the group has also left. The reason behind the departures couldn't immediately be learned, but they pose a blow to the expensive and technologically advanced project. Tesla previously relied on supercomputers from Nvidia Corp. to power its AI-based systems, while Dojo would compete with offerings from Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and IBM. In July, Tesla said it started production of the Dojo supercomputer system, which is being manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd., the same builder of chips that Apple uses.