Tesla's Talent Exodus Continues As Optimus AI Team Lead Leaves For Mark Zuckerberg's Meta

Tesla Inc.'s (NASDAQ:TSLA) talent exodus continues after the company's AI Team Lead for its Optimus humanoid robot announced he was leaving the company.

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Tesla Has Significantly Larger Financial Upside, Says Ashish Kumar

Ashish Kumar, the company's lead on Optimus' AI capabilities, took to the social media platform X on Thursday to share the update on his decision to leave Elon Musk's EV giant. Kumar is reportedly set to join Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META).

"It’s been an incredible ride leading the Optimus AI team. We went all-in on scalable methods — swapping the classical stack with reinforcement learning & scaling dexterity by learning from videos," Kumar said in the post, adding that AI is the most significant element for humanoid robots.

Decided to leave Tesla.

It's been an incredible ride leading the Optimus AI team. We went all-in on scalable methods — swapping the classical stack with reinforcement learning & scaling dexterity by learning from videos.

AI is the most significant bit to unlock humanoids.

— Ashish (@ashishkr9311) September 19, 2025

When asked whether compensation was the reason to join Meta, Kumar said that Tesla's financial upside was "significantly larger." He also added that he would've stayed at the company if he "wanted to optimize for money."

Financial upside at Tesla was significantly larger. Tesla is known to compensate pretty well, way before Zuck made it cool.

If I wanted to optimize for money, I would have stayed at Tesla.

— Ashish (@ashishkr9311) September 19, 2025

Tesla's Other High-Profile Exits, Elon Musk Criticism

The exit is in line with several other high-profile exits from the company, including CEO Elon Musk's close aide Omead Afshar, who exited Tesla earlier this year. The EV giant also saw its North American VP of sales and service, Troy Jones, exit the company after a 15-year tenure at Tesla. The company also saw its Head of Service in North America, Piero Landolfi, exit the company last month. Landolfi will be heading to Nimble, an AI robotics and e-commerce platform.

Amid the high-profile exits, however, a Tesla Autobidder engineer has slammed Musk's leadership as well as his political associations, citing them as direct reasons to leave the EV giant. Giorgio Balestrieri, who spent 8 years at Tesla, said that "Elon’s leadership and decision making seem seriously compromised," in a farewell post on LinkedIn.

Meta AI Glasses Stumble During Demo, Optimus' Future

The news comes as Meta recently unveiled its next generation of AI-powered smart glasses, which would feature a high-resolution display embedded within the lenses that would let users access notifications as well as translations and other features.

However, the glasses failed to correctly showcase the features twice during the demo, which Meta blamed on an unstable WiFi connection instead. The Smart Glasses retail for $799.  

Elsewhere, Tesla has shifted its focus to robotics and Optimus, as illustrated in the company's Master Plan IV. Musk also said that Optimus would represent over 80% of the EV giant's future value.

Tesla scores well on Momentum and Growth metrics, while offering satisfactory Quality, but poor Value. For more such insights, sign up for Benzinga Edge Stock Rankings today!

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