Who is Ashok Elluswamy, the Indian-origin engineer Elon Musk credits for Tesla's AI success
Credit: X/@SawyerMerritt
It's been nine years since
Elon Musk
first posted a call to build a team that would take Tesla's Autopilot vision forward. On June 2, 2025, Musk revisited that moment by resharing his 2015 tweet that read: 'Ramping up the Autopilot software team at Tesla to achieve generalized full autonomy.
If interested, contact autopilot@teslamotors.com.'
With it, he added a new note of recognition: '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.'
This isn't the first time Musk has credited Ashok Elluswamy for being instrumental in Tesla's journey toward AI and full self-driving capabilities.
Earlier in 2024, he wrote: 'Thanks Ashok! Ashok was the first person to join the Tesla AI/Autopilot team and ultimately rose to lead all AI/Autopilot software. Without him and our awesome team, we would just be another car company looking for an autonomy supplier that doesn't exist.
'
So, who is Ashok Elluswamy—the engineer who Musk says helped make Tesla more than just a car company?
A resident of San Francisco, Ashok Elluswamy is currently the Vice President of AI at Tesla, leading the company's Autopilot software.
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He first joined Tesla in 2014, making him the very first engineer hired for the Autopilot/AI team. Since 2019, he has led the AI software division, overseeing Tesla's efforts in self-driving, neural networks, and real-time decision-making systems.
Ashok holds a Master of Science degree in Robotic Systems Development from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor's degree in Electronics and Communication from the College of Engineering, Guindy, in Chennai. Prior to his time at Tesla, he worked as a Software Engineer at WABCO Vehicle Control Systems. He also completed a research internship at Volkswagen's Electronic Research Lab, contributing to their autonomous driving projects—experience that would later align with Tesla's ambitions.
With over 11 years at Tesla and counting, Elluswamy remains one of the longest-serving members on the company's AI team, and, as Musk's tweets confirm, one of its most critical.
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