A former Tesla engineer has left the company’s humanoid robot project, Optimus, to co-found a robotics start-up with operations in Palo Alto, California, and Shenzhen amid intensifying competition in the industry.
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Shuo Yang, who was a robotics and machine learning engineer at Tesla, announced in posts on X and LinkedIn on Wednesday that he had quit the electric vehicle company to start Mondo Tech with a former colleague from his days at DJI, China’s top drone maker.
Mondo Tech aims to build “smaller, more accessible robots” for consumer use, he wrote. The products will be “mini robots that can serve as little friends in people’s lives”, according to the engineer, who added that the inspiration for the move came from his desire to build a companion robot for his son.
The new company was established in Shenzhen in January with 1 million yuan (US$136,500) in registered capital, according to Chinese corporate database Qichacha. Gao Jianrong, a former director at DJI who oversaw the company’s RoboMaster robotics competition, is listed as the start-up’s director, according to corporate data tracker ITJuzi.
Mondo Tech joins a growing list of robotics ventures attracting Chinese talent from US tech giants, as the race to produce artificial intelligence (AI)-powered machines – for both factory and household use – heats up.
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Yang, a graduate of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Carnegie Mellon University, is part of a wave of engineers pivoting to consumer-facing robots.