Tesla’s Former Engineer Allegedly Stole Its Supercomputer’s Secrets

Tesla sued their former engineer Alexander Yatskov for allegedly stealing "confidential and tightly guarded" information related to the company's supercomputer technology, titled Project Dojo, according to initial Bloomberg reports. Based on a copy of the complaint, Tesla accused Yatskov of downloading the covert information to his personal devices and refused to return them.

Yatskov had begun working as a thermal engineer for Tesla in January and aided in the design of Dojo's cooling systems. Dojo itself represents Tesla's neural net training computer, capable of processesing data for training the AI software in Tesla's self-driving cars.

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The complaint detailed that Yatskov had access to the cooling information of Dojo, as well as other relevant confidential information. According to the automotive company, all engineers are required to sign a non-disclosure agreement that should prevent them from disclosing or storing confidential information about project. 

Tesla says Yatskov has violated the mentioned agreement by allegedly "removing Tesla confidential information from work devices and accounts, accessing it on his own personal devices, and creating Tesla documents containing confidential Project Dojo details on a personal computer." They also mentioned that it discovered Yatskov sending emails containing classified Tesla information from his personal email address to his work email.

Furthermore in the complaint, Tesla claims Yatskov admitted to storing classified information when the company confronted him. They placed Yatskov on administrative leave starting April 6th, 2022 and asked him to bring in his devices so Tesla could recover any stolen information.

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The Tesla engineer responded to this decision by purportedly providing the company with a "dummy" laptop in an attempt to conceal any evidence against him. The alleged decoy contained none of the information in question, and was made to "look like it may have accessed only inoffensive Tesla information, like an offer letter."

Yatskov had already resigned from his position on May 2 and the company sued him for compensatory and exemplary damages. This wasn't the first instance Tesla sued a enginner; they also sued a former employee who worked at Xpeng after Tesla claimed that the engineer stole the Autopilot source code.