Ashish Kumar, former AI lead on Tesla’s Optimus humanoid program, has co-founded Intelligent Machines, a San Francisco startup building specialized non-humanoid industrial robots for manufacturing and aerospace work. After about a year at Tesla, which he left in September 2025, he is betting on reinforcement learning to teach machines complex physical tasks, drawing on his academic experience at UC Berkeley. The startup, which has already recruited several former members of the Optimus team, is seeking a seed round of up to $100 million, an unusually large check for a company at this stage. Tesla’s Optimus program reportedly produces hundreds of units per week and targets more than 1,000 units weekly by the end of 2026, but it struggles with AI generalization, with robots often needing days to learn basic new tasks despite over 500,000 hours of training data. Kumar’s exit fits a broader pattern of senior departures, including program vice president Milan Kovac in June 2025.
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