AI teams of Tesla are preparing for what their leadership is calling the most demanding period in the company’s history. Ashok Elluswamy, the electric vehicle maker’s vice president of AI software, instructed employees last month that 2026 will test them like never before.
Speaking at an all-hands meeting that brought together staff from Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving teams alongside the humanoid robot division working on Optimus, Elluswamy made it clear that the coming year would require unprecedented effort. According to insiders who attended the nearly two-hour session, workers should prepare to work more intensely than at any point in their careers at the company.
Tesla AI Division Pushes Aggressive Robotaxi and Optimus Goals
The meeting was a “rallying cry,” one attendee said, as leaders from across the AI division laid out aggressive timelines and ambitious targets. At the center of those plans are two of CEO Elon Musk’s biggest bets: launching a nationwide Robotaxi service and ramping up production of Tesla’s humanoid robot.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. On Tesla’s October earnings call, Musk laid out plans to operate the Robotaxi service in eight to 10 metropolitan areas by the end of 2025. He added that the company wants more than a thousand ride-hailing vehicles on the road within the same timeframe.
These aren’t just product launches; these are central to Tesla’s vision of transforming from an automaker into a robotics and AI powerhouse.
Meanwhile, production of Optimus is slated to start at the end of 2026. Musk also acknowledged that reaching an annualized production rate of one million units will take a while.
“That production ramp will take a while to get to an annualized rate of 1 million because it’s going to move as fast as the slowest, dumbest, least lucky thing out of 10,000 unique items,” he said during the October call.
That puts additional pressure on these teams, at a time when Tesla shareholders this month approved an unusual compensation package for Musk that includes moonshot-style pay targets tied directly to the success of Robotaxi and Optimus.
Among the targets: one million Robotaxis deployed on public roads and one million humanoid robots. The package could make Musk the world’s first trillionaire.
Elon Musk’s Robot Army and the Secretive Autopilot Team’s Priority at Tesla
Experts told Business Insider that the unusual compensation structure may be necessary to incentivize the billionaire entrepreneur, especially with Musk juggling numerous companies, including SpaceX and X.
Musk joked to himself in October that he needed more Tesla shares because he wasn’t comfortable building a “robot army” without having “strong influence” over the company.
The organizational structure that supports these ambitions reflects their priority within Tesla. The Autopilot team, under the same roof as the Optimus division, has long operated as one of the most important and secretive programs at the company. Workers are primarily kept away from other engineers, and the team’s organizational chart is private.
This separation comes with expectations. The Autopilot team puts in longer hours than typical engineering groups at Tesla. The team has held weekly meetings with Musk since the group was established, a tradition that underlines the CEO’s hands-on involvement with the technology he considers critical to Tesla’s future.
Musk Ramps Up Optimus Development with Camera-Centric AI Shift
The Optimus team is doing much the same. After Milan Kovac left his post as Optimus vice president earlier this year, Elluswamy assumed leadership of the humanoid robot project. Led by him, the team has transitioned to a more camera-centric approach similar to the process used to train Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software.
Like their Autopilot counterparts, the Optimus team meets weekly with Musk. The CEO said in October, “These Friday meetings sometimes go till midnight,” showing how intense the development work on this humanoid robot has been. Neither Elluswamy nor a Tesla spokesperson replied to requests for comment on the all-hands meeting and the timelines discussed.
As Tesla sprints to deliver on these ambitious promises, the burden squarely falls on its AI teams. Whether the “hardest year” ahead will yield the breakthroughs Musk envisions remains to be seen, but one thing is for certain: the pressure is on.
