Tesla is suing former Optimus engineer Jay Li in federal courtroom after accusing him of stealing commerce secrets and techniques and utilizing them to allow a startup he based after he left.
Li is accused of stealing confidential recordsdata and utilizing them to assist get his firm, “Proception,” off to a rocking begin. Tesla says the recordsdata Li took helped his new startup “shortcut the standard improvement course of” for robotic palms, one thing that took Tesla years to develop and evolve.
The corporate mentioned within the grievance (through Reuters):
“By way of Li’s pilfering, Defendant Proception purportedly achieved in a matter of months what it has taken Tesla over 4 years, tons of of workers, and billions of {dollars} to realize.”
Li was an worker at Tesla for a number of years, engaged on the Optimus sensor group from 2022 to 2024. The corporate says it utilized and devoted “extraordinary sources” to the event of Optimus, which has come a great distance since its unveiling a number of years in the past.
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Li allegedly downloaded confidential recordsdata associated to Optimus’ robotic hand motion analysis earlier than departing the corporate. He didn’t work on the palms on the time. Nonetheless, he left and swiftly began Proception, because the go well with states the corporate was based simply six days after he left Tesla.
Proception was gloating about its capacity to construct robotic palms simply 5 months after the corporate was based. Tesla says the palms have “hanging similarities” to its personal design for Optimus.
The corporate is searching for financial damages and a courtroom order that may block Proception from misusing the secrets and techniques it accuses Li of taking.
This isn’t the primary go well with Tesla has filed over commerce secrets and techniques and confidential data theft. Just lately, it accused German-Canadian twin citizen Klaus Pflugbeil of stealing battery-related secrets and techniques. He was arrested and sentenced to 2 years in jail.
Males accused of promoting Tesla battery secrets and techniques arrested in undercover sting
The U.S. Division of Justice used an undercover sting to arrest Pflugbeil.
Tesla is being represented by Josh Krevitt, Orin Snyder, and Angelique Kaounis of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher.
The case is Tesla Inc. v. Notion Inc., U.S. District Courtroom for the Northern District of California, No. 5:25-cv-04963.
