Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA)'s AI and Autopilot chief Andrej Karpathy, who led Autopilot efforts at Elon Musk's electric vehicle company for about five years, has left the firm.
"It’s been a great pleasure to help Tesla towards its goals over the last 5 years and a difficult decision to part ways," Karpathy wrote on Twitter.
"In that time, Autopilot graduated from lane keeping to city streets and I look forward to seeing the exceptionally strong Autopilot team continue that momentum."
Musk thanked Karpathy for his work in a Tweet saying: "Thanks for everything you have done for Tesla! It has been an honor working with you."
Karpathy, who reported directly to Musk, held the title of senior director of AI (artificial intelligence).
Earlier this month, Tesla closed an office in San Mateo, California where data annotation teams worked on improving driver assistance technologies. Karpathy's departure follows the closure of that office.
Citing records from California Employment Development Department, CNBC reported that 229 people were dismissed from the San Mateo office.
Several senior machine learning scientists and engineers reported directly to Karpathy, who had taken a months-long sabbatical from Tesla.
Since June 2021, approximately 70% of reported crashes involving advanced driver-assistance systems occurred in vehicles made by Tesla, according to US federal figures released last month.
Officials said the data was incomplete and not intended to indicate which carmaker's systems would be the safest.
In late 2016, Tesla fans were promised by Musk that a self-driving car would drive from Los Angeles to New York without "the need for a single touch" by 2017, and in 2019, Musk raised billions of dollars for Tesla promising investors 1mln "robotaxi ready" cars by end-2020.
As of yet, the company has not demonstrated a coast-to-coast autonomous vehicle.