Tesla’s Lead of Optimus AI, Ashish Kumar, is departing the company, and people sure are confused about it.

Kumar, who has been with Tesla for just over two years, made his announcement on X, revealing he was taking a role at Meta as a Research Scientist.

He said:

“Decided to leave Tesla. It’s been an incredible ride leading the Optimus AI team. We went all-in on scalable methods — swapping the classical stack with reinforcement learning & scaling dexterity by learning from videos. AI is the most significant bit to unlock humanoids.”

Decided to leave Tesla.
It’s been an incredible ride leading the Optimus AI team. We went all-in on scalable methods — swapping the classical stack with reinforcement learning & scaling dexterity by learning from videos.

AI is the most significant bit to unlock humanoids.

— Ashish (@ashishkr9311) September 19, 2025

Tesla fans were baffled by Kumar’s decision, immediately questioning his choice, with many wondering why he’d leave Elon Musk for Mark Zuckerberg.

Some said the choice had to be financially motivated, but Kumar said it was not, and if money were the driving factor, he would have stayed at Tesla:

Financial upside at Tesla was significantly larger. Tesla is known to compensate pretty well, way before Zuck made it cool.
If I wanted to optimize for money, I would have stayed at Tesla.

— Ashish (@ashishkr9311) September 19, 2025

Others were grateful for Kumar’s contributions to the company and were very respectful regarding his decision:

All the best and thank you for your contributions to Tesla.
— Ale𝕏andra Merz 🇺🇲 (@TeslaBoomerMama) September 19, 2025

Dude, sorry for all the negative comments your getting but thank you for your contributions to Tesla and best of luck to you in your new position
— William F (@retat50) September 19, 2025

It’s possible that Kumar chose to leave Tesla for more reasons than one, and financial reasons do not appear to be the issue, as he admitted. However, it could be a better work-life balance at Meta, or perhaps there is an internal project that simply interests him more.

Tesla will be okay, and Optimus will continue to improve with a new Lead in that position. We wish Ashish the best of luck in his new role, and we are thankful for what he contributed to the Optimus program.

Elon Musk is urging Tesla shareholders to take part in the company’s upcoming annual meeting, calling the vote critical not just for the automaker but potentially for the world. 

“This shareholder vote decides the future of Tesla and may affect the future of the world,” Musk posted on X, emphasizing the importance of proposals that will be voted on in the upcoming meeting on November 6, 2025.

A pivotal inflection point

In a message from its official account, Tesla described itself as being at “a critical inflection point” as it prepares for its annual meeting. Shareholders will soon receive voting instructions, with the company asking investors to back the Board’s recommendations on all proposals. The post also referenced Tesla’s Master Plan Part IV, which outlines ambitious growth targets across vehicles, energy, and artificial intelligence.

“Tesla is at a critical inflection point. We need your vote ahead of our 2025 Annual Meeting on November 6. Tesla shareholders, the owners of our company, will soon receive their control numbers and voting instructions from their brokers. This will enable you to vote. We are asking you to vote with the Board’s recommendations on *all* proposals,” Tesla wrote in its post.

The company also highlighted that it is currently on the brink of a “massive wave of transformational growth.” Tesla stressed that confidence in Musk’s leadership is central to this trajectory, as he is the CEO who could lead Tesla into its new, ambitious era.

Some Key proposals

Two proposals stand out in Tesla’s recommendations, as per the company’s VoteTesla.com website. The first seeks to amend and restate Elon Musk’s 2019 Equity Incentive Plan, creating a special reserve of nearly 208 million shares to give the board flexibility amid ongoing litigation surrounding Musk’s 2018 CEO Performance Award. It also calls for replenishing the general share reserve with 60 million additional shares, ensuring capacity for employee equity grants.

“Equity is the cornerstone of Tesla’s compensation philosophy. We believe we need a framework that allows us to honor the deal we made with Elon and the extraordinary value he created for Tesla shareholders under the 2018 CEO Performance Award. In addition, it is essential that we maintain sufficient equity reserves and maximum flexibility to attract, retain and motivate talent at Tesla,” Tesla wrote.

The second proposal is a new 2025 CEO Performance Award, a pay-for-performance framework that links Musk’s compensation to reaching ambitious market cap and operational milestones. Under the plan, Musk would earn nothing unless Tesla achieves extraordinary results, potentially creating more than $7 trillion in shareholder value and pushing the company’s valuation to as high as $8.5 trillion. The company also asked shareholders to vote in favor of re-electing three directors: Ira Ehrenpreis, Joe Gebbia, and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson.

Tesla’s European sales are showing signs of recovery, with new data suggesting an upward trend in registrations across several key markets this quarter.

The trend suggests that Tesla’s decline in Europe this 2025 may have been driven primarily not by Elon Musk’s politics or consumers’ dislike of the brand, but by the unavailability of the Model Y, which had a changeover to a new version earlier this year.

Tesla Europe hints at recovery

Between September 8 and 14, Tesla registered 4,400 vehicles in 10 European countries, as per data aggregated by industry watchers. This suggests that Tesla has reached 63% of its August’s sales figures in the region in just two weeks, as noted in a CarUp report.

Tesla’s year-to-date sales in Europe remain down 33% year-to-date, with Sweden showing a notable 73% drop. By contrast, Norway is seeing strong momentum. Tesla has already matched its Q3 2024 sales in the country, and after 79 days of the quarter, Q3 2025 is shaping up to be its strongest yet. 

Across Europe, Tesla remains 11% behind last year’s Q3 levels but has climbed 11.3% compared to the previous quarter, suggesting a stabilization after months of declines. This also suggests that the alarming headlines from earlier this year, which hinted at Tesla’s demise in Europe due to Elon Musk’s politics in the United States, may have been overblown.

Giga Berlin boosts output

Tesla’s recovery in Europe is hinted at by Giga Berlin in Grünheide, which is preparing for stronger output through the rest of 2025. The facility has already produced more than 500,000 Model Ys and recently built 100,000 units of the new Model Y, as noted in a Trading View report. The factory supplies over 30 markets, including Europe, Canada, Australia, and the Middle East.

Plant manager André Thierig told European media that Tesla has revised production targets upward for the third and fourth quarters, citing “very good sales figures” in multiple regions. With this, it would not be surprising if Tesla’s sales figures in Europe see even more improvements over the coming months.