Connect with us

News

Tesla names Milan Kovac as VP, Head of Engineering for Optimus

Credit: Tesla Optimus/X

Published

on

Tesla’s Director of Optimus and Autopilot Engineering Milan Kovac has been promoted to Vice President of Optimus (Tesla Bot). The update was posted on the executive’s personal LinkedIn page

Similar to Tesla’s Director of Autopilot Software Ashok Elluswamy, who was promoted to Vice President of AI Software recently, Kovac is a veteran of the electric vehicle maker’s Autopilot team. A look at Kovac’s LinkedIn page shows that he has been working for the electric vehicle maker for 8 years and 7 months. That’s an impressive amount of time considering Tesla’s reputation for being a demanding workplace. 

Kovac started his tenure at Tesla back in April 2016, when he was hired as a Staff Software Engineer for the Autopilot team. He only held this post for three months as he was quickly promoted to Engineering Manager of Autopilot Software in June 2016. He was further promoted to Senior Engineering Manager of Autopilot Software on January 2018, less than two years after he joined the company. 

Kovac would be promoted once more to Director of Autopilot Software Engineering in May 2019, and he would hold this post for 2 years and 9 months before he was promoted to Director of Optimus and Autopilot Engineering. Under his leadership, Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot evolved from a concept to a full blown Gen 2 bipedal machine capable of working autonomously in the company’s factories. 

Interestingly enough, Kovac’s personal LinkedIn page indicates that he was promoted to Vice President of Optimus (Tesla Bot) back in September 2024. This is quite interesting as his promotion seemed to have been kept under wraps. This also means that Kovac was already promoted to his current post when Tesla held its “We, Robot” event last week. 

Advertisement

As per Bloomberg NewsEd Ludlow, there were reportedly discussions about Elluswamy and Kovac taking the stage at the “We, Robot” event, and pitches were reportedly made to Musk about this. Musk, however, reportedly wanted to keep the event high level. This was quite unsurprising, as Musk previously stated that competitors tend to closely watch Tesla’s events for potential information or innovations that can be emulated. 

Don’t hesitate to contact us with news tips. Just send a message to simon@teslarati.com to give us a heads up.

Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

Advertisement
Comments

Elon Musk

SpaceX Starship Flight 10: What to expect

SpaceX implemented hardware and operational changes aimed at improving Starship’s reliability.

Published

on

Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX is preparing to launch the tenth test flight of its Starship vehicle as early as Sunday, August 24, with the launch window opening at 6:30 p.m. CT. 

The mission follows investigations into anomalies from earlier flights, including the loss of Starship on its ninth test and a Ship 36 static fire issue. SpaceX has since implemented hardware and operational changes aimed at improving Starship’s reliability.

Booster landing burns and flight experiments

The upcoming Starship Flight 10 will expand Super Heavy’s flight envelope with multiple landing burn trials. Following stage separation, the booster will attempt a controlled flip and boostback burn before heading to an offshore splashdown in the Gulf of America. One of the three center engines typically used for landing will be intentionally disabled, allowing engineers to evaluate whether a backup engine can complete the maneuver, according to a post from SpaceX.

The booster will also transition to a two-engine configuration for the final phase, hovering briefly above the water before shutdown and drop. These experiments are designed to simulate off-nominal scenarios and generate real-world data on performance under varying conditions, while maximizing propellant use during ascent to enable heavier payloads.

Starship upper stage reentry tests

The Starship upper stage will attempt multiple in-space objectives, including deployment of eight Starlink simulators and a planned Raptor engine relight. SpaceX will also continue testing reentry systems with several modifications. A section of thermal protection tiles has been removed to expose vulnerable areas, while new metallic tile designs, including one with active cooling, will be trialed.

Advertisement

Catch fittings have been installed to evaluate their thermal and structural performance, and adjustments to the tile line will address hot spots observed on Flight 6. The reentry profile is expected to push the structural limits of Starship’s rear flaps at maximum entry pressure.

SpaceX says lessons from these tests are critical to refining the next-generation Starship and Super Heavy vehicles. With Starfactory production ramping in Texas and new launch infrastructure under development in Florida, the company is pushing to hit its goal of achieving a fully reusable orbital launch system.

Continue Reading

Elon Musk

Elon Musk takes aim at Bill Gates’ Microsoft with new AI venture “Macrohard”

It is quite an appropriate name for a company that’s designed to rival Microsoft.

Published

on

Credit: xAI/X

Elon Musk has set his sights on Microsoft with a new company called “Macrohard,” a software venture tied to his AI startup, xAI. 

Musk described the project as a “purely AI software company” that’s designed to generate hundreds of specialized coding and generative AI agents that could one day simulate products from companies like Microsoft entirely through artificial intelligence.

Macrohard‘s Purpose

Musk announced Macrohard on Friday, though xAI had already registered the trademark with the US Patent Office a few weeks ago, as noted in a PC Mag report. Interestingly enough, this is not the first time that Musk has mentioned such an initiative.

Just last month, he stated that xAI was “creating a multi-agent AI software company, where Grok spawns hundreds of specialized coding and image/video generation/understanding agents all working together and then emulates humans interacting with the software in virtual machines until the result is excellent.”

At the time, Musk stated that “This is a macro challenge and a hard problem with stiff competition,” hinting at the venture’s “Macrohard” moniker. A few years ago, Musk also posted “Macrohard >> Microsoft” on X. 

Advertisement

Powered by xAI and Colossus

Macrohard appears to be closely linked to xAI’s Colossus 2 supercomputer project in Memphis. Musk has confirmed plans to acquire millions of Nvidia GPUs, joining rivals such as OpenAI and Meta in a high-stakes race for AI computing power. Colossus is already one of the most powerful supercomputer clusters in the world, and it is still being expanded.

xAI is only a couple of years old, having been founded in March 2023. During its Engineering Open House event in San Francisco, Elon Musk highlighted that the company’s speed will be its primary competitive edge. “No SR-71 Blackbird was ever shot down and it only had one strategy: to accelerate,” Musk said.

Continue Reading

Elon Musk

Elon Musk confirms he’s still in wartime CEO mode

He is still locked in.

Published

on

Wcamp9, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Elon Musk tends to use social media platform X as his personal platform to express himself, so much so that critics tend to allege that the CEO is no longer serious about his numerous companies. 

As per Musk, he is still very much in wartime CEO mode, despite all the jokes and fun posts about Ani on X. 

Elon Musk leads several prolific companies, much more than the average CEO. And while Tesla is the only publicly traded entity that he currently leads, Musk is so visible that everyone across the internet pretty much has a strong opinion of him one way or another. For his longtime supporters and followers, however, what truly matters is if Musk is locked in.

Considering that Elon Musk’s feed on X has recently been filled with AI imagery, a good portion of which involve AI-rendered women, some X users have expressed concerns that the CEO may be losing focus once more. Musk responded to one such user by highlighting his very busy schedule and his numerous active projects. 

Needless to say, Elon Musk is still locked in. He is still in “wartime CEO” mode.

Advertisement

As per the CEO, even his recent AI posts about AI are “part of a broader vision and strategy.” He also highlighted that SpaceX’s Starship Flight 10 is launching in a few days, xAI’s Grok 5 is starting its training next month, and Tesla’s Autopilot V14 is also coming next month. As per Musk, “long-term strategy is compelling.”

Elon Musk’s comments are quite accurate. While he may seem to spend all his time on X, after all, he is very much still neck-deep in all his companies’ projects. There is a reason why Musk became known as a visionary, and a lot of it is because he really is intimately involved in all of his companies’ projects. 

Continue Reading

Trending