Tesla Loses AI Talent to New Robotics Startup

Tesla is experiencing a notable brain drain in its AI and robotics divisions, with a significant exodus of talent to a new robotics startup called Sunday Robotics. Sunday Robotics has emerged from stealth mode, announcing it secured $35 million in funding led by Benchmark and Conviction.

The startup has successfully recruited key engineers from Tesla's Optimus and Autopilot teams, including Nishant Desai, who worked on Tesla's machine learning team for nearly five years, and Nadeesha Amarasinghe, who served as the Engineering Lead for AI Infrastructure at Tesla for over seven years.

Another notable departure is Perry Jia, a key engineer on the Optimus and Autopilot programs, who now leads Data Operations at Sunday Robotics. This trend of talent leaving Tesla for a smaller startup is particularly striking, as Sunday Robotics is not a large corporation with massive compensation packages but a fledgling company aiming to carve its niche in the robotics landscape.

Founded by Stanford roboticists Tony Zhao and Cheng Chi, Sunday Robotics is focusing on developing a domestic robot named Memo, which is designed to assist with household chores such as cleaning dishes and folding laundry.

Unlike Tesla's bipedal Optimus robot, Memo is a wheeled robot that emphasizes dexterity and reliability. The company claims to have collected a massive dataset of 10 million behavioral episodes through an innovative method that utilizes a $200 Skill Capture Glove distributed to ordinary people.

This approach allowed the startup to crowdsource real-world data from users, reflecting the messy conditions and everyday challenges of home life, and is a stark contrast to Tesla's reliance on high-cost VR teleoperation suits for training.

Tesla's methods, while high-fidelity, are slower and more expensive, and the company has also stated it is shifting towards using video for training. The departure of such high-profile talent from Tesla to Sunday Robotics raises questions about Tesla's current standing in the competitive robotics and AI landscape.

Elon Musk has claimed that Tesla is ahead of the competition in AI and robotics, asserting that production of the Optimus robot will begin in the millions next year, and even suggesting it could eventually end poverty.

However, many in the robotics field are skeptical of these claims, noting a lack of evidence supporting Tesla's lead over other companies. In contrast, Sunday Robotics is pursuing a more pragmatic approach, focusing on realistic applications of robotics, which has resonated with some Tesla engineers, prompting them to join the startup.