MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — In the latest of a series of high-profile exits from the project, Chris Urmson, chief technology officer of Google parent Alphabet's autonomous car initiative and one of its longest-serving engineers, has left the project to explore other opportunities, eWeek reports.

Other senior engineers who have recently left the autonomous car initiative, include Jiajun Zhu, one of the founding members of the self-driving car team at Google, and Dave Ferguson, computer vision and machine learning lead for the initiative. Anthony Levandowski, former technical lead of Google's self-driving car group, left the group earlier this year to start his own venture.

The departures come just months after Google hired former Hyundai executive and veteran of the auto industry John Krafcik to head its autonomous car initiative, according to eWeek. For the full story, click here.