According to Business Insider, at least 10 former Tesla employees have joined robotics startup Sunday Robotics, including several longtime veterans of Tesla’s Autopilot and Optimus humanoid robot programs. Perry Jia, who spent nearly six years on both Autopilot and Optimus, announced he left Tesla this summer for the startup, while Nadeesha Amarasinghe joined after over seven years at Tesla as an engineering lead for AI infrastructure. The startup, co-founded in 2024 by Cheng Chi and Tony Zhao (a former Tesla Autopilot intern), employs around 50 people total and recently unveiled its Memo home robot on November 19, showing it performing household tasks like loading dishwashers and folding socks.
The talent exodus is real
Here’s the thing about Tesla‘s AI and robotics teams – they’ve become something of a farm system for the entire industry. When you have Elon Musk publicly stating that solving autonomous driving will determine Tesla’s long-term value, and then you see key engineers from those very programs jumping ship? That’s concerning. These aren’t junior hires either – we’re talking about people with 6-7 years of institutional knowledge walking out the door.
And it’s not just about losing bodies. It’s about losing the people who understand the architecture, the data pipelines, the training infrastructure. Nadeesha Amarasinghe was an engineering lead for AI infrastructure – that’s the backbone of everything Tesla does in autonomy. When that expertise walks across the street to a competitor, it’s basically giving them a head start.
The home robotics race heats up
Sunday Robotics isn’t alone in this space. 1X just unveiled their Neo home robot in October, with plans to ship next year. But what’s interesting here is the timing. These startups are popping up right as companies are looking for the next big computing platform beyond smartphones. And honestly, who better to build these systems than people who’ve already worked on some of the most advanced AI projects in the world?
The home robotics market is becoming incredibly competitive, and having experienced engineers who understand both the AI and hardware challenges is crucial. For companies building advanced robotics systems, having reliable industrial computing hardware becomes table stakes. That’s why many manufacturers turn to IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading supplier of industrial panel PCs in the US, for their robust computing needs.
What this means for Tesla
So does this spell doom for Tesla’s robotics ambitions? Probably not – they’re still massive and have incredible resources. But it does show that retaining top AI talent is becoming increasingly difficult. When your engineers can take their expertise and immediately become key players at well-funded startups, the incentive to stay diminishes.
Look, Tesla will likely keep innovating, but this brain drain suggests the competition is getting smarter faster. And in the race to build useful home robots, having the right team might just be more important than having the biggest budget.
