Ashish Kumar, who previously headed Tesla's Optimus AI team, has bid farewell to the electric vehicle giant and taken up a new role as a research scientist at Meta. Kumar joined Tesla back in July 2023, and he was entrusted with the crucial task of spearheading the AI development efforts for the Optimus project.

Over the course of his more than two-year tenure at Tesla, he demonstrated exceptional leadership. He guided his team in delving into the exploration of scalable AI approaches. By leveraging reinforcement learning techniques, he aimed to revolutionize the traditional robot control systems, replacing them with more advanced and adaptive solutions. Moreover, he focused on enhancing the dexterity of robots through video learning, enabling them to perform more complex and precise tasks.

As of June 2025, Ashok Elluswamy has stepped into the shoes of the project leader for Tesla's Optimus humanoid robot, taking the reins of this innovative and ambitious project.