Silicon Valley self-driving car startup Zoox Inc. is in need of a new chief executive officer after it ousted founder and now former CEO Tim Kentley-Klay in a somewhat bloody coup.

The company, founded in 2014 and as recently as 2016 described as secretive, is not just building self-driving vehicle technology like many others in the space, it’s also aiming to deliver a fully self-driving vehicle by 2020.

Its website still provides few details, but it’s believed that Zoox is not attempting to build vehicles for sale to the public. Instead it’s apparently attempting to take on Uber Technologies Inc. and Waymo LLC by delivering a sizable fleet of self-driving custom-built vehicles designed specifically for the role.

As for the coup, the company has not detailed the reasons why Kentley-Klay (pictured, second from left) was ousted, but it appears to be related to a $500 million round of new venture capital financing in July. The suggestion is that the VCs may have demanded a change of leadership in return for their investment.

Cheers to the most legendary crew, ever. pic.twitter.com/STNUV3fFC9

— Tim Kentley-Klay (@TimKentleyKlay) August 22, 2018

Suffice as to say Kentley-Klay is not a happy former CEO and has taken to Twitter with more than a dozen tweets about his apparent firing. Among the more juicy, Kentley-Klay claims that he was fired “without warning, cause or right of reply,” that his ousting was a case of “Silicon Valley up to its worst tricks” and that “rather than working through the issues in an epic startup for the win, the board chose a path of fear, optimizing for a little money in hand at the expense of profound progress for the universe.”

Jesse Levinson (far left), the company’s other co-founder and current chief technology officer, will be promoted to president, according to Bloomberg. Carl Bass, the former CEO of Autodesk and a Zoox board member, was named executive chairman and temporary CEO pending a search for a permanent replacement for Kentley-Klay.

Photo: jurvetson/Flickr