Former Tesla Scientist Announces Lightweight Humanoid Robot Project for Europe

A former Tesla scientist who worked on the humanoid robot Optimus has announced plans to create a lightweight humanoid robot of European design — for manufacturing facilities, logistics warehouses, and household use, according to Bloomberg.

What is known about the project

The project's author previously was part of the engineering team that developed Optimus — Elon Musk's program to create a human-like robot for Tesla factories. Now he is launching his own product, betting not on power and load capacity, but on lightweight construction and universal applicability.

• The project's author is a former Tesla Optimus engineering team member
• The robot is designed as lightweight — unlike the heavy industrial humanoids of competitors
• Target application areas — manufacturing facilities, logistics warehouses, and households
• Development is underway in Europe, not in the United States

Why specifically a lightweight humanoid is needed

Most industrial humanoid robots of the first generation are heavy and expensive machines designed for specific repetitive operations like moving boxes or loading conveyor belts. The bet on a lightweight design opens a different path: such a robot is cheaper to manufacture and maintain, safer when working alongside humans, and more easily adapts to different tasks — from warehouse to home. Increasingly, it is universality, not raw strength, that is being named as the key competitive factor for the second wave of humanoid robots.

Why humanoid robots became an arms race

Optimus remains one of Tesla's flagship projects: Musk has repeatedly called it a potentially main source of company revenue in the future and promises to start using robots on his own factories in the coming years. Competitors have meanwhile entered the market — Figure AI, Agility Robotics with the robot Digit, Chinese Unitree, and industry veteran Boston Dynamics with Atlas. Most of them focus on industrial tasks — packing, sorting, moving cargo — and only gradually move toward household use scenarios.

Europe has so far remained on the periphery of this race: the main capital investments and pilot deployments of humanoid robots are concentrated in the US and China, where manufacturers face worker shortages in warehouses and on conveyor lines and are ready to invest in automation. A project with a Tesla team and a European home address could change the balance of power in the market, especially if the developers can offer a more compact and lighter machine than current leaders — and simultaneously address a similar labor shortage in European industry and logistics.

What this means

The exodus of Tesla engineers into their own startups shows that the humanoid robot market is entering a phase of active diversification: alongside giants like Tesla and Figure AI, niche players are emerging that bet on lightweight and affordable models, and the technology itself is gradually expanding beyond the US and China and reaching Europe.