Tesla Loses Key AI Talent to Robotics Startup Sunday Robotics

In a surprising shift, Tesla is losing critical AI and robotics staff to a small but ambitious newcomer: Sunday Robotics. The startup, co‑founded in 2024 by Cheng Chi and Tony Zhao, recently came out of stealth mode — and revealed that at least 10 former Tesla employees have jumped ship. Many of these engineers previously worked on Tesla’s most high‑profile projects: the Autopilot and Optimus humanoid robot programs. Among the names: Perry Jia, who spent nearly six years at Tesla, and Nadeesha Amarasinghe, a longtime engineering lead for AI infrastructure. Sunday Robotics now boasts a team of about 50 people, including “memory developers” tasked with training a home robot called Memo. Unlike Tesla’s bipedal humanoid ambitions, Memo is a wheeled robot designed for household chores like folding socks and loading dishwashers. What sets Sunday Robotics apart is its use of a new robotics‑AI model named ACT-1 — a foundation model trained to perform complex, long-horizon tasks without prior robot-specific training data. The company claims this enables Memo to generalize and handle varied everyday tasks robustly. The shift raises questions about the future of Tesla’s robotics and autonomous‑driving roadmap. With key AI and robotics engineers leaving, the company may face new challenges in meeting its ambitious goals for vehicles, humanoid robots, and AI‑driven automation across industries. #Tesla #SundayRobotics #AItalentDrain #HomeRobots #SlimScan #GrowthStocks #CANSLIM