Tesla Sues Former Optimus Engineer for Alleged Trade Secret Theft

Tesla has filed a lawsuit against a former engineer, accusing him of stealing trade secrets from the company's Optimus humanoid robot project and using those secrets to launch a competing startup.

The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday and first reported by Bloomberg, accuses Jay Li of misappropriating Tesla's trade secrets related to the development of "advanced robotic hand sensors" to establish his startup, Proception. Backed by Y Combinator, Proception focuses on manufacturing robotic hands.

The complaint states that Li worked at Tesla from August 2022 to September 2024 and downloaded confidential information about Optimus onto two personal smartphones.

According to the filing, during his final months at Tesla, Li researched "humanoid robot hands" on his work computer and conducted internet searches about venture capital and funding sources for other startups.

"Proception was founded less than a week after Li left Tesla," the lawsuit claims. "Within just five months, Proception publicly claimed it had 'successfully built' advanced humanoid robot hands—designs strikingly similar to what Li had worked on while at Tesla."

Proception's website states that the company aims to "revolutionize human-machine interaction" by creating the world’s most advanced humanoid hands.

Tesla's Optimus robot project has faced challenges since the company announced in 2021 that it was developing a humanoid robot, known as the Tesla Bot. In 2022, Tesla stated the robot would be released alongside other new products in 2023, but Optimus remains under development.

In July 2024, Tesla's Elon Musk said the company would begin selling the robot by 2026. Just months later, during Tesla's "We, Robot" event in October 2024, the showcased Optimus robots were primarily controlled remotely by humans.