News blog Electrek reported on Friday that Tesla had hired Henry Kuang, a former Meta veteran and Cruise’s Head of Autonomy, to join the Elon Musk-led company as Director of AI / Deep Learning for autonomous driving.
Sawyer Merritt, the most well-known Tesla content creator on X with over 900,000 followers, also shared a post reporting the move.
However, it was quickly deleted after the company’s VP of AI Software, Ashok Elluswamy, denied the hiring by commenting, “fake news.”
On LinkedIn, Kuang claims he joined Tesla in May as Director of AI/Deep Learning technologies for Autonomous Driving (AD).
The senior engineer previously worked for General Motors’ robotaxi unit Cruise as Senior Director/ Head of Autonomy.
General Motors acquired the company in 2016, three years after it was funded. Cruise was set to develop a fleet of driverless taxis in California using Chevrolet Bolt units.
The company started testing in 2021, and announced the service was open to the public a year later. It soon expanded to Phoenix and Austin.
However, the service was suspended in October 2023, and General Motors stopped funding Cruise in late 2024.
At Cruise, he was Senior Director of Engineering and Head of Perception from 2020 to 2023. He was then promoted to Head of Autonomy.
Kuang’s team developed and launched GM‘s first self-driving vehicle in San Francisco, “and laid the foundation for subsequent releases in Phoenix and Austin.”
The engineer previously worked previously worked for social media platform Facebook/Meta, for over 20 years. From Staff Machine Learning Engineer until 2004, he was promoted to Engineering Manager.
In 2008, he became Senior Engineering Manager in the company, a position he held for more than 10 years. He was responsible for search experience on specialized surfaces on Meta.
After serving as Director of Engineering for one year, the executive left Mark Zuckerberg’s company.
On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that Tesla executive Omead Afshar, who had been promoted last year to oversee the company’s sales and manufacturing operations in North America and Europe, has left the company.
Afshar joined Tesla in 2017 as a Project Manager in the Office of the CEO. He was seen by internal sources as one of Elon Musk’s most trusted aides.
The media outlet reported soon after that Jenna Ferrua, Tesla’s HR Director for the North American region, is also leaving the company. Ferrua joined the company in mid-2020.
