If you work on Tesla’s AI teams, next year will be the “hardest year” of your life.
That’s according to the company’s vice president of AI software, Ashok Elluswamy, who spoke at an all-hands meeting for staff across Tesla’s Autopilot and Optimus teams last month.
Elluswamy said 2026 will be a key test for the automaker, according to insiders. The executive told staffers that they should expect to work more intensely than ever to achieve the company’s goals.
One person said the meeting was meant to be a “rallying cry.”
Leaders from across the AI division spoke to staffers during the nearly two-hour meeting, insiders said.
Workers were given aggressive timelines for Optimus production, as well as targets for Tesla’s Robotaxi service. As Tesla races to launch Robotaxis across the nation and ramp up production of the company’s humanoid robot, the two divisions are at the center of CEO Elon Musk’s biggest bets.
Elluswamy and a spokesperson for Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
Musk said during Tesla’s earnings call in October that the company plans to operate its Robotaxi service in eight to 10 metropolitan areas by the end of 2025. He has also said the company aims to have more than a thousand ride-hailing vehicles on the road by the end of the year.
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Meanwhile, Musk has said that Tesla aims to start production of the Optimus bot toward the end of 2026.
“That production ramp will take a while to get to 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 in the October call.
Tesla shareholders approved a pay package for Musk earlier this month that could make the Tesla CEO the world’s first trillionaire. It includes several ambitious Robotaxi and Optimus milestones, including deploying 1 million Robotaxis on public roads and 1 million humanoid robots.
At the time, several compensation consultants told Business Insider that Musk’s moonshot pay package was unusual for the industry and could be key to keeping the billionaire focused on Tesla.
Musk joked in October that he needed the additional Tesla shares because he didn’t feel comfortable building a “robot army” if he couldn’t have a “strong influence” over the company.
Tesla’s Autopilot team, which works out of the same office space as the Optimus team, has long been one of the company’s highest-priority programs. The team is largely kept separate from other engineers, and its organizational chart is kept private, Business Insider previously reported.
The team is known for working longer hours, and, since its inception, has had weekly meetings with Musk, workers previously told Business Insider.
Elluswamy assumed a leadership role on the Optimus team earlier this year, after the departure of Optimus vice president Milan Kovac. Since then, the company has shifted the team’s focus to a more camera-focused approach — similar to how it trains its Full Self-Driving software.
Tesla’s Optimus team also meets on a weekly basis with the CEO. Musk said in October that he has regular meetings with the team on Fridays, “which sometimes goes till midnight.”
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