Tesla lawsuit says former engineer stole secrets for robotics startup

By Blake Brittain

June 12 (Reuters) - Tesla TSLA.O has sued one of its former engineers and his startup in California federal court, accusing them of stealing trade secrets related to its robot project Optimus to build a competing business for developing robotic hands.

The lawsuit filed on Wednesday said Jay Li took confidential Tesla files before leaving the company and used them to enable his startup Proception to "shortcut the typical development process" for robot hands.

"Through Li’s pilfering, Defendant Proception purportedly achieved in a matter of months what it has taken Tesla over four years, hundreds of employees, and billions of dollars to achieve," the complaint said.

Spokespeople for Proception and attorneys and spokespeople for Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit on Thursday.

Tesla said in the complaint that it had devoted "extraordinary resources" to developing Optimus, a humanoid robot powered by artificial intelligence. The lawsuit said Li worked on the Optimus sensor team from 2022 to 2024.

Tesla alleged that Li downloaded confidential files related to Optimus' robotic hand movement research before leaving the company last year, despite no longer working on Optimus' hands at the time.

The complaint said Li founded Proception six days after leaving Tesla and that the startup touted its ability to build robotic hands five months later. Proception's hands have "striking similarities" to Tesla's, according to the lawsuit.

Tesla requested an unspecified amount of monetary damages and a court order blocking Li and Proception from misusing its trade secrets.

The case is Tesla Inc v. Proception Inc, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 5:25-cv-04963.

For Tesla: Josh Krevitt, Orin Snyder and Angelique Kaounis of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher

For Proception and Li: attorney information not yet available