Tesla Sues engineer for stealing supercomputer secrets.
Engineer named Alexander Yatskov stole confidential information related to the Dojo supercomputer.
Tesla sued a former engineer named Alexander Yatskov, claiming he illegally transferred confidential information about Tesla’s supercomputer technology to his own computer.
Tesla is developing an in-house supercomputer, called Dojo, to deal with massive amounts of data, including video from Tesla cars. Tesla will use this supercomputer to create autonomous driving software.
Alexander Yatskov was hired in January as a thermal engineer to help design cooling systems for the computer, which generates a lot of heat, Tesla said in the complaint.
Tesla claims that Yatskov started downloading confidential and tightly guarded information related to the Dojo supercomputer project to his personal computer.
Tesla even said that Yatskov admitted to downloading confidential information from his Tesla devices to his personal devices, after he was confronted. Yatskov quit on May 2 and has refused to return the information, Tesla said in the complaint.
“This is a case about illicit retention of trade secrets by an employee who, in his short time at Tesla, already demonstrated a track record of lying and then lying again by providing a ‘dummy’ device to try and cover his tracks,” Tesla said in its complaint.
Tesla is seeking compensatory and exemplary damages and an order that would stop Yatskov from disseminating its trade secrets and direct him to return all proprietary data.
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