Tesla Motors CIO leaves to work on his own stealth start-up

Jay Vijayan has the blessing of Tesla CEO Elon Musk to start his own company

The CIO at trendy US car manufacturer Tesla Motors, Jay Vijayan, has left his job to begin working on his own stealth start-up.

According to his LinkedIn page, Vijayan actually left his role in January. In his four-year stint as CIO of Tesla, Vijayan led the transformation of the company's digital and information systems.

Vijayan has said that he and his team built all the core corporate applications and systems infrastructure for Tesla from the ground up, including Tesla's e-commerce, ERP, service and logistics systems.

In fact, Vijayan said his highlight was building proprietary software, called Warp, which helped to support Tesla's approach to selling and servicing cars. Warp also handles all back-office functions, including workflow management, financial accounting and supply chain management.

Vijayan said he had left on good terms with Tesla, and told CIO Journal that he loved working at the company but had wanted to start his own company for some time. He added that Elon Musk was his "favourite CEO", and that Musk had been supportive of his decision to start a new firm. He hasn't yet revealed any details about his company.

Prior to joining Tesla, Vijayan headed the IT business applications unit for VMware, and held a variety of engineering and applications management positions for Oracle between 1999 to 2007.

Vijayan leaves at a time when Tesla is enjoying relative success: its $35,000 Model 3 electric car has had more than 276,000 pre-orders, according to Musk.

It is not known whether Tesla has found a permanent replacement for Vijayan.

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