Tesla TSLA has filed a federal lawsuit against former engineer Zhongjie "Jay" Li, alleging that he stole trade secrets tied to the company's ambitious Optimus humanoid robot program, and used them to launch a competing Silicon Valley startup, Bloomberg reports.
The lawsuit, filed June 11 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claims Li downloaded proprietary data related to Optimus’s robotic hand systems just before leaving Tesla in September. According to the complaint, the files were stored on two personal smartphones.
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Just days after his departure, Li incorporated Proception, a Palo Alto-based robotics startup now marketing humanoid robot hands that Tesla claims in the filing are strikingly similar to its Optimus designs. Tesla alleges the resemblance stems from stolen intellectual property rather than original engineering.
"Defendants took a shortcut: theft," the company said in the lawsuit, accusing Li and Proception of bypassing "the laborious process of development" by leveraging sensitive material from Tesla's multibillion-dollar research effort.
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Tesla's Optimus Robot and What's at Stake in the Lawsuit
Optimus is Tesla's long-term bet on integrating humanoid robots into both industrial and personal environments. According to CEO Elon Musk, the robot's hand is one of its most complex and valuable components, featuring highly advanced sensors and mechanical dexterity, Bloomberg says.
During Tesla's earnings call on Jan. 29, Musk said, "Optimus will be overwhelmingly the value of the company," emphasizing the robot's pivotal role in Tesla's future roadmap. The company claims in the lawsuit that its investment in Optimus runs into the billions, and each step of progress requires extensive research, testing, and capital.
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“Although Tesla does not disclose the precise year-over-year investments in Optimus, the research and development costs are in the billions of dollars. Such an ambitious project demands unparalleled expertise and substantial time and financial commitment to achieve even incremental progress,” the filing reads.
Tesla's filing includes an internal email from last August warning employees that company devices and accounts were monitored and that any mishandling of data would trigger investigations.
Proception's Rapid Rise Now Faces Legal Scrutiny
Li lists himself as the founder and CEO of Proception on LinkedIn, where he describes the company's mission as “tackling one of the most challenging and exciting humanoid projects of our time.”
The lawsuit, seeks both compensatory and exemplary damages, along with a permanent injunction barring Proception and its team from using any of Tesla's trade secrets. Tesla has also requested a jury trial.
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Tesla's legal team characterized the alleged behavior as a calculated attempt to exploit corporate investments and engineering breakthroughs for personal commercial gain.
“Their conduct is not only unlawful trade misappropriation—it also constitutes a calculated effort to exploit Tesla's investments, insights, and intellectual property for their own commercial gain,” the filing says.
As Tesla expands its footprint beyond electric vehicles into robotics and AI, the outcome of this case may send a clear message about how tech giants will defend innovation in an era of increasing startup competition.
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