Mr. Milan Kovac - Vice President in charge of Tesla's Optimus robot development program - has just announced his departure from the company after nearly a decade of association. Kovac himself shared the information on the X platform, where he called it the difficultest decision of his life.
According to Mr. Kovac, the only reason he decided to quit his job was because he had been away from his family for too long and wanted to spend more time with relatives abroad. He affirmed that he has always been firmly supportive of Elon Musk and Tesla.
Mr. Kovac started to join Tesla nearly 10 years ago and was a leading engineer in the Autopilot development group. Since 2022, he was tasked with leading the development of Optimus robot, and officially assumed the role of Vice President of the program at the end of 2024. On his personal LinkedIn page, Mr. Kovac once said he was responsible for running all the engineers of the Optimus project, and leading the basic software development groups for both Optimus and Autopilot.
Mr. Kovac's withdrawal comes in the context of CEO Elon Musk recently announcing that Tesla will have " Thousands" of Optimus robots operating in its factories by the end of this year. Musk also affirmed that Optimus will be produced at an unprecedented speed, aiming to reach millions of units per year as soon as possible.
After Mr. Kovac's departure, Ashok Elluswamy - Vice President in charge of Tesla's artificial intelligence software department - will take over the Optimus program.
This is considered a remarkable change in Elon Musk's senior technical leadership team, especially at a pivotal stage when the company was betting big on bringing human-shaped robots into the actual production process on an industrial scale.
