Tesla Optimus robotics vice chairman Milan Kovac is leaving the corporate

Tesla’s vice chairman of Optimus robotics, Milan Kovac, mentioned on Friday that he is leaving the corporate.

In a submit on X, Kovac thanked Tesla CEO Elon Musk and reminisced about his tenure, which started in 2016.

“I want to thank @elonmusk from the bottom of my heart for his trust and teachings over the decade we’ve worked together,” Kovac wrote. “Elon, you’ve taught me to discern signal from noise, hardcore resilience, and many fundamental principles of engineering. I am forever grateful. Tesla will win, I guarantee you that.”

Tesla is growing Optimus with the purpose of in the future promoting it as a bipedal, clever robotic able to the whole lot from manufacturing facility paintings to babysitting.

In a first-quarter shareholder deck, Tesla mentioned it was once on track for “builds of Optimus on our Fremont pilot production line in 2025, with wider deployment of bots doing useful work across our factories.”

During Tesla’s 2024 annual shareholder assembly, Musk characterised himself as “pathologically optimistic,” then claimed the humanoid robots would raise the corporate’s marketplace cap to $25 trillion at an unspecified long term date.

In fresh weeks, Musk advised CNBC’s David Faber that Tesla is now coaching its Optimus techniques to do “primitive tasks,” like selecting up items, open a door or throw a ball.

Competitors within the area come with Boston Dynamics, Agility Robotics, Apptronik, 1X and Figure.

Kovac had in the past served as the corporate’s director of Autopilot instrument engineering. He rose to steer the corporate’s Optimus unit as vice chairman in 2022.

Musk for my part thanked Kovac for his “outstanding contributions” to the industry.

Tesla did not reply to a request for remark.

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