Bloomberg reports that Ganesh Venkataramanan, the project lead for Tesla's Dojo supercomputer, has left the company, dealing a setback to the automaker's self-driving technology efforts. According to anonymous sources familiar with the matter, Venkataramanan departed from Tesla last month. Peter Bannon, a former Apple executive and a director at Tesla for the past seven years, has taken over as the new lead for the Dojo project.

The Dojo system is a Tesla-designed supercomputer that plays a crucial role in training the machine learning models behind the company's self-driving systems. By processing data captured by Tesla vehicles at a rapid pace, it enhances the accuracy and efficiency of the company's algorithms. Analysts have hailed Dojo as a potential competitive advantage, with Morgan Stanley estimating that it could increase Tesla's value by $500 billion.

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, and company representatives have yet to comment on Venkataramanan's departure. It remains unclear why Venkataramanan and at least one other member of the project team left, but their departures pose a challenge to the ambitious and technologically advanced Dojo project.

Tesla had previously relied on supercomputers from Nvidia to power its AI-based systems, but the development of Dojo marked a significant shift in the company's strategy. Dojo is equipped with a custom D1 chip designed by Venkataramanan, Bannon, and other prominent figures from the silicon industry. Venkataramanan, who joined Tesla in 2016 and helped establish the company's AI hardware and silicon teams, previously worked at Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

In a bid to consolidate the Dojo infrastructure, Tesla recently installed hardware at a centralized location in Palo Alto, California. The Dojo system had previously relied on multiple data centers situated in different locations.

Last year, another key figure in Tesla's AI endeavors, Andrej Karpathy, also departed from the company. Karpathy, who led AI efforts at Tesla, has since joined OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research lab.

Tesla's investment in Project Dojo is substantial, with plans to allocate over $1 billion to the supercomputer project by the end of 2024, as announced by Musk himself. The development of Dojo is crucial for Tesla's goal of achieving full autonomy in its vehicles and remaining at the forefront of self-driving technology.

The departure of Venkataramanan and other team members highlights the challenges involved in developing cutting-edge AI hardware and software. Nonetheless, Tesla remains determined to push forward with the Dojo project, as it seeks to establish its dominance in the self-driving car market.