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Fortune

Christiaan Hetzner

Milan Kovac ran Elon Musk’s most important project: What the departure of the Optimus head means for Tesla

Elon Musk Tesla Inc. United States Andrej Karpathy

SpaceX, Twitter and electric car maker Tesla CEO Elon Musk looks on as he speaks during his visit at the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, on June 16, 2023 (Credit: Alain Jocard—AFP/Getty Images)

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.

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