Will Tesla AI Chief Andrej Karpathy's Departure Impact The Company? Analysts, Investors Weigh In

Zinger Key Points

Tesla AI executive Andrej Karpathy's quitting means FSD launch will be pushed back by a year to 2024, Munster says
Future Funds Gary Black sees little stock reaction as most investors put little incremental value to FSD
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Following Tesla, Inc's TSLA senior director of artificial intelligence, Andrej Karpathy. announcing his departure, analysts delved into the impact of the development.

Munster Sees Pushback To Broader FSD Availability: Karpathy's departure will move the general availability of the full self-driving suite from 2024 to 2025, Tesla analyst and Loup Funds co-founder Gene Munster said.

The analyst still expects Tesla get to autonomy before the other car companies. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, while replying to an inquiry from one of his followers, said the FSD 10.13 will go to internal beta on Thursday and external beta by next week. Beta version 11, which merely incorporates highway driving, would be released in August, the billionaire said. "Importance of "v11" has been reduced by all the 10.x releases. We're already mostly at v11," he added.

10.13 goes to internal beta tomorrow, external next week. Should handle Chuck's complex left turn.

Beta v11 hopefully end of next month, which just amounts to incorporating highway. Importance of "v11" has been reduced by all the 10.x releases. We're already mostly at v11.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 14, 2022

Munster does not see any change in the timing for the Optimus Tesla bot.

Tesla Stock May Not React Much: Gary Black, the founder of Future Fund, said Karpathy wouldn't have left Tesla if FSD was on the verge of Level 4 full self-driving. General availability of FSD isn't, therefore, close, he added. That said, the analyst does not see the stock falling by much in reaction, rationalizing that most investors put "little incremental value" in FSD above its take rate.

Tesla Investors, Influences Downplay Event: A Tesla investor said if Karpathy had left two years ago, he would have been concerned about Tesla Autopilot. He said the executive departure may not hurt significantly in the long run as there's so much talent on Tesla's Autopilot team now.

If Andrej Karpathy had left Tesla 2 years ago, I'd be concerned about Tesla Autopilot.

The truth is, there's so much talent on the autopilot team today that Andrej's departure won't have a significant impact long term. 5 years is a good run, and we were lucky to have him. $TSLA
— Jason DeBolt � (@jasondebolt) July 14, 2022

A Tesla influencer said the company might be close to attaining FSD, and therefore, Karpathy may have felt his job is done. After over five years at Tesla, he might want a different challenge, he added.

He also guessed that Karpathy could move to academics and research. When Karpathy was out for four months on a sabbatical, great updates still rolled out and at a consistent pace, he noted. The influencer also expressed happiness over Ashok Elluswamy remaining with the company. The Twitter handle of an EV news channel tweeted that Karpathy wouldn't have left Telsa if he had thought the team couldn't succeed without him.