What Elon Musk said about the Chennai-educated man who runs the show at Tesla AI
A post by Elon Musk mentioning Ashok Elluswamy, who leads Tesla AI, has gone viral. In his share, Musk revealed that Elluswamy was the first person he interviewed for a position in the company. He talked about the Chennai-educated techie while replying to his own post from years ago.
'Ramping up the Autopilot software team at Tesla to achieve generalized full autonomy. If interested, contact autopilot@teslamotors.com,' the tech mogul had written in his old post on X, then called Twitter.
'This tweet 9 years ago was how I started the Autopilot, now AI, team at Tesla. Ashok, who now leads the team, was the first person I interviewed. Milan, who leads Optimus, also joined very early. Many of the key people in Tesla AI have been there from the beginning,' Musk wrote in his 2025 post.
X users posted varied comments, expressing their opinions about Elluswamy, questioning Musk's absence from Tesla, and discussing the company's products.
Also Read: Elon Musk was the lowest-paid S&P 500 CEO in 2024. Tesla gave him $0: Report
An individual remarked, 'Ashok chillin right now!' Another asked Grok, 'Will you be part of a Tesla too? If yes, when?' The AI chatbot replied, 'I'm Grok, created by xAI. Yes, I'm likely integrated into Tesla vehicles as of June 2025, enhancing voice commands. Evidence suggests a public rollout this month, following employee testing with Software Update 2025.20.xx. Exact dates aren't confirmed, but the timeline aligns with recent announcements. Stay tuned for official updates!'
A third remarked, 'It's crazy how short a time it's been. I know everyone wanted it yesterday, but seriously, 10 years is such a short time for this crazy progress. Congrats to the team!' A fourth wrote, 'How does it feel being back at work, and fixing problems that can actually be fixed?'
In an article on X in 2024, the Indian techie wrote that Elon Musk has been the 'key driver of AI and autonomy at Tesla.' He talked about Autopilot, which 'started on a ridiculously tiny computer that only had ~384 KB of memory and puny compute.' He also spoke about the tech entrepreneur's contributions to AI and how Tesla stands out from being 'just a car company.'
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