Chris Lattner, a longtime Apple software guru, has left his post running software for Tesla’s Autopilot division after just six months. Lattner announced his departure in a tweet late Tuesday. Earlier in the evening, Tesla announced that it had hired leading AI expert Andrej Karpathy as the company’s new director of AI and Autopilot. Karpathy had previously been a researcher at OpenAI, a nonprofit effort to advance artificial intelligence started by Musk and other Silicon Valley veterans.
“Turns out that Tesla isn’t a good fit for me after all,” Lattner wrote. “I’m interested to hear about interesting roles for a seasoned engineering leader!”
A Tesla spokesperson confirmed Lattner’s departure, adding that “Chris just wasn’t the right fit for Tesla, and we’ve decided to make a change. We wish him the best.” Jim Keller, who oversees hardware for Autopilot, will take on Lattner’s duties in the meantime.
Lattner joined Tesla at a crucial time for Autopilot
Lattner joined Tesla in January as the vice president of Autopilot Software. The electric car company hired him away from Apple, where he notably led the development of the Swift programming language. At the time of tweeting about his departure, Lattner’s Twitter bio still referred to Tesla’s Autopilot software as “the new frontier.”