Tesla sues former engineer over Optimus robot trade secret theft
Tesla filed a lawsuit alleging that a former engineer transferred confidential trade secrets about Optimus robot hand sensors to his personal phones and subsequently founded a competing startup called Proception that announced nearly identical technology within months.
What happened
Tesla filed a lawsuit against former engineer Chunggee Jae Lee, who worked at the company between August 2022 and September 2024, accusing him of stealing trade secrets related to advanced hand sensors for the Optimus humanoid robot.
According to the complaint, Lee transferred confidential information from the Optimus project to his personal phones on two separate occasions. In his final months at Tesla, Lee researched humanoid robotic hands on his work computer and searched for investment funding sources and venture capital firms.
Less than a week after leaving Tesla, Lee founded Proception, a Y Combinator-backed startup. Within five months, Proception announced it had built advanced humanoid robotic hands that closely resembled the designs Lee had worked on at Tesla.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.