Milan Kovac ran Elon Musk’s most important project: What the departure of the Optimus head means for Tesla
"This one hits different. You’re in the Tesla hall of fame, brother,” wrote one senior Tesla manager.
- Optimus unites all the attributes Elon Musk loves in a killer product—one identical set of hardware that can be affordably produced at scale, yet capable of meeting various needs through intelligent software features. Now Tesla’s vaunted robot project, tipped to add $25 trillion in value to the company, lost the director who has run the program since its inception three years ago.
The brains behind CEO Elon Musk’s trillion-dollar dream of a robot future are gone, and the repercussions are only starting to be felt as staff members say their goodbyes.
On Friday, Milan Kovac announced he would leave Tesla after more than nine years to spend more time with his family abroad. A naturalized European immigrant, he originally came to the U.S. on the same H-1B visa that Musk argues is vital for America’s competitiveness.
It’s difficult to overstate the importance of his departure for Tesla since Musk himself has predicted Kovac’s humanoid robot Optimus ought to add $25 trillion to its market cap—more than all ten of the world’s most valuable companies combined. Investors have been eager for every update Musk posts on social media showing its progress, such as last month’s video of the droid nimbly dancing on two metallic feet.
