Tesla’s powerful Optimus humanoid robotics program head Milan Kovac has left Tesla with immediate effect, the company announced last Friday.
The Caltech-trained former Stanford professor and Google X engineer – who has been playing a major role in Tesla’s AI and robotics initiatives for almost a decade – mentioned personal reasons and a desire to spend more time with family overseas as the sole force behind his tough decision.
His exit feels seismic within the robotics industry and prompts questions about Tesla’s near-term future in humanoid robots.
Kovac joined Tesla in 2016 on the Autopilot team, and advanced to lead engineering, the release said. In 2022 he made the move to head up Optimus, a project Elon Musk has described as a product of, potentially, a “$25 trillion company.”
Working under Kovac, the team at Optimus built functional prototypes and made real progress in training the robot from third-person vids and toward an ultimately more intuitive and rapid type of learning. His departure also comes at a pivotal moment, with Tesla increasingly putting its emphasis on autonomous technology and robotics as pillars of its future.
Assuming Kovac’s duties is Ashok Elluswamy, who currently heads the Autopilot team at Tesla. The move points to a further consolidation of AI and robotics leadership under Elluswamy, a veteran described by Musk as a “key person” in Tesla’s AI since the early days.
Although Kovac said he supports Elon Musk’s and Tesla’s “vision of the future,” his sudden departure leaves a cloud of doubt over the Optimus project, which Musk had said he wanted to see mass produced and deployed in Tesla’s own factories by the end of this year.
The consequences for the wider robotics world are varied. Kovac’s knowledge and leadership were instrumental to the progression of Optimus, and his absence may mean that there will be a stalling, if not a reordering, of priority for development. But the appointment of Elluswamy, whose resume reveals a wealth of experience in autonomous driving, signals AI still has a role to play in Tesla’s varied array of technology.
The robotics industry will now be looking carefully at how Tesla manages the leadership transition, and whether it can avoid corresponding setbacks while still on track to hit ambitious timelines not only for Optimus’s development, but also his commercial deployment at a time uncertainty on issues such as global supply chain disruptions impacting critical components such as rare-earth magnet.