Tesla has recruited Yilun Chen, a robotics engineer who spent nearly four years at Apple, to work on its Optimus humanoid robot team.
Chen, who most recently served as a research scientist on Apple’s robotics research team in Cupertino through November, announced his departure from the iPhone maker to join Tesla‘s Optimus AI team in Palo Alto, California.
Chen announced the move on X on Sunday saying humanoids represent a breakthrough opportunity enabled by recent advances in large language models and physical AI.
“With the recent breakthrough of LLMs and Physical AI, this dream is finally within reach and it’s on us to make it come true,” he wrote.
He praised Tesla‘s combination of software, hardware and AI capabilities, and noted being impressed by the scale and sophistication of the Optimus laboratory and the team’s dedication during his initial visit to the company’s office.
“You can feel the energy to change the world here. I really like it so far,” Chen wrote in the post.
Chen’s Path
During his time at Apple, Chen worked on embodied AI research covering robotics foundation models, simulation systems, visual language architectures, dexterous manipulation, and humanoid whole body control, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Prior to the research role, he spent three years as a machine learning engineer in Apple’s ‘Special Project Group’, where he focused on photorealistic scene generation and agent behavior modeling for autonomous systems.
Chen’s background also includes machine learning positions at Lyft and Uber, where he worked on autonomous vehicle planning systems.
At Uber, he was part of the core team that developed the company’s first graphics processing unit-based path planning system for self-driving cars.
Optimus as One of the Key Priorities
The hire comes as Tesla ramps up its humanoid robot ambitions.
At the company’s Annual Shareholder Meeting late last month, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk announced plans to build 1 million Optimus units in Fremont, California, with 10 million units planned for annual production in Texas.
The company expects to begin mass production of the third-generation Optimus robot in 2027.
Tesla started construction last month on the factory for Optimus at its Giga Texas facility.
Asked in mid-November about a potential surge in Tesla‘s stock price, Musk wrote on X that there would be a “major valuation change when there is unsupervised self-driving at scale and an even larger valuation change when Optimus reaches volume production.”
Below is Chen’s full statement on X:
“Career Update: After almost four memorable years, I moved on from Apple last week, closing an unforgettable chapter of my professional journey.
I’m sincerely grateful for the opportunities to work on so many amazing projects and products across the company.
Though many of them are not public yet (wait for the surprise!), I feel greatly honored to experience, learn and grow from IC to tech lead, from engineering to research, from larger engineering teams to early product incubation and prototyping.
Each role has offered me invaluable unique lessons.
Above all, my deepest gratitude goes to my colleagues, mentors and friends who made this journey truly unparalleled and meaningful. I’ll miss you all.
New Chapter: I’m joining Tesla Optimus AI team to work on humanoid robots.
Humanoids are the ultimate dream of our generation. With the recent breakthrough of LLMs and Physical AI, this dream is finally within reach and it’s on us to make it come true. Tesla has the right combination of software, hardware and AI talents to make it happen – I was totally blown away by the scale and sophistication of the Optimus lab and deep dedication of people when I got to visit the office.
My first week was already so much fun and exciting: flat team structure, spontaneous deep technical discussions, direct communications across levels, hardcore building and crazy ideas with super fast iterations.
You can feel the energy to change the world here. I really like it so far.”
