A former Optimus engineer is being sued by Tesla for allegedly stealing trade secrets and using them to form his own start-up.
Zhongjie “Jay” Li was an engineer for Tesla’s bipedal robot, Optimus, working specifically on “advanced robotic hand sensors.”
While working at Elon Musk’s robotics company for almost two years, Li was supposedly “entrusted with some of the most technical data in the program,” according to the complaint.
Before he left Tesla, Li supposedly downloaded sensitive information relating to Optimus on two personal phones.
Just weeks after leaving the company and downloading the files, Li started Proception and claimed to have built advanced robotic hands that “bear a striking resemblance to the designs Li worked on at Tesla.”
This information includes engineering specs, schematics, and blueprints, which include measurements, grips, tensions, ranges of motion, and degrees of freedom.
Li supposedly stole source code relating to Optimus’s hand motion and actuators, along with more important data that “collectively represents the crown jewels of Tesla’s robotic efforts.”
While working for Tesla, Li’s position was reassigned, meaning that his duties had changed, and he no longer had the need to access files relating to Optimus’ hand.
Throughout July and September 2024, Li accessed various internal documents he was not permitted to under his reassignment.
“Rather than build through legitimate innovation, trial, and technical rigor, Defendants took a shortcut: theft,” the complaint put forward by Tesla alleges.
“Tesla’s work on this component reflects many thousands of engineering hours, multiple technical design generations, and millions of dollars in R&D investment.” The suit is put forward as “innovation must be earned, not stolen,” lawyers said.
Just six days after leaving Tesla, Li formed Proception with another co-founder.
Five months later, the company said that in the coming 9 months, Proception would make shipments of its robotic hands to “research customers.”
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