Ex-Tesla Optimus AI chief launches industrial robot startup, targets $100M seed round
Ashish Kumar spent two years teaching Tesla’s humanoid to move. His next company is reportedly betting on industrial robots instead — and investors are pricing Optimus alumni accordingly.
Ashish Kumar, who led artificial intelligence development for Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot, has founded an industrial robotics startup in San Francisco called Intelligent Machines, according to a report by The Information. The October 6 report by Kevin McLaughlin says the company is targeting a seed round of about $100 million and has already recruited several core members of the Optimus team. The company has not formally announced itself, and the fundraising and hiring details have not been independently verified.
The verified part of the story is Kumar’s resume. He joined Tesla in July 2023 to lead the Optimus AI effort, holding a 2023 PhD in artificial intelligence from UC Berkeley. On September 19, 2025, he announced on X that he was leaving Tesla: “It’s been an incredible ride leading the Optimus AI team. We went all-in on scalable methods — swapping the classical stack with reinforcement learning & scaling dexterity by learning from videos. AI is the most significant bit to unlock humanoids.” He then joined Meta as a research scientist, a move covered by Electrek, Tech Startups, and other outlets. Roughly a year later, he has left to start his own company.
Kumar is the latest in a line of Optimus departures. Milan Kovac, who ran the overall Optimus program, left Tesla in June 2025; Ashok Elluswamy has since taken over the project. Tesla has also pushed back Optimus production timelines while reworking the design. Each exit chips at the institutional knowledge behind the program Elon Musk has called central to Tesla’s future value.
Two things stand out about the reported plan. First, the direction: industrial robots, not humanoids. After two years pushing a general-purpose humanoid at Tesla, Kumar is reportedly aiming at the structured, paying world of industrial automation — where customers buy reliability, not demos. Second, the number: a $100 million target for a seed round is an enormous bet, roughly twenty times what a typical seed raise looks like, and it says less about industrial robots than about how the market prices proven Optimus talent right now.
Caveats apply. The Information’s report sits behind a paywall; the company has not announced; and “targeting” a round is not closing one. Until Intelligent Machines says something itself — what it builds, who backs it — this remains a well-sourced report about one of the most closely watched alumni of the humanoid race.