Tesla has just lost another key talent amid the intensifying company shake-up. The AI Tech Lead and Manager was the latest to abandon his position at the electric vehicle giant to launch a new robotics firm in partnership with the ex-Cruise CEO.
Tesla loses its top AI lead
Paril Jain, former Tech Lead for “Planning, Imitation Learning & RL team for Tesla AI,” formally announced his decision to leave the Musk-led company on LinkedIn on Tuesday.
Jain served as the top AI lead at Tesla for the last nine years, enabling him to gain a very crucial role in the company’s autonomous driving effort. He outlined the following key responsibilities of the AI team on the popular social networking website:
| “>Build the Foundation Models for autonomy that can scale to vehicle as well as humanoid platforms >Leverage millions of miles of driving data and interventions to build a robust and scalable end-to-end learning-based self-driving system. >Research on cutting-edge techniques in generative models, reward models, and reinforcement learning to improve the safety and comfort of our driving models. >Experiment with synthetic data generation and network-driven data collection approaches to enhance the diversity and quality of training data >Ship production quality, safety-critical software to the entirety of Tesla’s vehicle fleet” |
Therefore, his sudden departure will undoubtedly affect Tesla’s ambition to achieve full autonomy and other AI-related endeavors, such as humanoid robot development.
The Bot Company
Paril Jain indicated his involvement as a co-founder of the newly launched robotics startup The Bot Company. Former Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt helped him in establishing the new business.
“Super pumped for the next phase of building. We have spent the last decade building robots that give people some of their time back, and it’s time to take it to the next level with The Bot Company.”
Cofounder & CTO, The Bot Company
Jain also made positive remarks about the Tesla AI team.
“As for Tesla – it has been an incredible 7 years building the best self driving product on the market. You’ll love the upcoming versions of V12 and Actually Smart Summon. The team is on an amazing trajectory to continue pushing forward more improvements on the road to being driverless.”
Cofounder & CTO, The Bot Company
Vogt’s departure from Cruise
Like Jain, Kyle Vogt also left his former company, Cruise, in November last year.
He helped establish Cruise in 2013, which General Motors acquired in 2016. It has offered driverless ride-sharing taxis in San Francisco since last year. However, one of its robotaxis ran over and pinned a woman pedestrian in October 2023.
This major incident prompted the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to suspend Cruise’s operating license.
Now, former CEO Vogt is set to achieve new heights with the new robotics startup it co-founded with Paril Jain and ex-Cruise Technical Advisor Luke Holoubek.
“I’m back to building! Excited to share I’ve started a company with Paril Jain and Luke Holoubek. We’re building bots that do chores so you don’t have to. So many things compete for our time – commutes, longer working hours, and the complexities of modern life. Our team has spent years building robots (including the self-driving kind) that give people some of that time back, and we’re taking that a step further with this company.”
The Bot Company CEO Kyle Vogt
The Bot Company has already started a website, indicating its mission of “building robots that give you time back. Everyone is busy. Bots can help.” It has also raised a whopping $150 million from investors and entrepreneurs so far.
