{"id":173088,"date":"2025-06-06T20:30:46","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T20:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/06\/teslas-optimus-robot-vp-is-leaving-the-company-techcrunch\/"},"modified":"2025-06-06T20:30:46","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T20:30:46","slug":"teslas-optimus-robot-vp-is-leaving-the-company-techcrunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/06\/teslas-optimus-robot-vp-is-leaving-the-company-techcrunch\/","title":{"rendered":"Tesla&#8217;s Optimus robot VP is leaving the company | TechCrunch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The head of Tesla\u2019s Optimus humanoid robot program, Milan Kovac, is leaving the company.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kovac said Friday in a <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/_milankovac_\/status\/1931097888995807554?s=46&amp;t=dDcpMIMYg6fdPePSTT9k6w\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">post<\/a> on X that he \u201chad to make the most difficult decision\u201d of his life to leave. \u201cI\u2019ve been far away from home for too long, and will need to spend more time with family abroad,\u201d he wrote. Kovac said that was \u201cthe only reason\u201d and that his support for Musk and Tesla is \u201cironclad.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kovac\u2019s departure was first reported Friday <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2025-06-06\/tesla-s-leader-of-optimus-humanoid-robot-program-leaves-company\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">by Bloomberg News<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The departure comes as Tesla CEO Elon Musk has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/what-elon-musk-said-about-robotics-robotaxi-optimus-media-blitz-2025-5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">claimed<\/a> the company will have \u201cthousands\u201d of Optimus robots operating in its factories by the end of this year. \u201cAnd we expect to scale Optimus up faster than any product, I think, in history, to get to millions of units per year as soon as possible,\u201d Musk said last month.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kovac worked at Tesla for nearly 10 years, with much of that time coming as a top engineer on the Autopilot team. He was tapped to help lead development of Optimus in 2022 and became a vice president overseeing the program in late 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019m driving the Optimus program (Tesla\u2019s humanoid robot) &amp; all its engineering teams,\u201d Kovac previously wrote on his LinkedIn profile. \u201cSeparately, I\u2019m also driving the engineering teams responsible for all the software foundations &amp; infrastructure common between Optimus and Autopilot.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of Tesla\u2019s AI software division, will take over the Optimus project, according to Bloomberg.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>This story has been updated with information from Kovac\u2019s X post about his departure.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/06\/06\/teslas-optimus-robot-vp-is-reportedly-leaving-the-company\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The head of Tesla\u2019s Optimus humanoid robot program, Milan Kovac, is leaving the company. Kovac said Friday in a post on X that he \u201chad to make the most difficult decision\u201d of his life to leave. \u201cI\u2019ve been far away from home for too long, and will need to spend more time with family abroad,\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":173089,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-173088","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}