A former Apple engineer who spent nearly four years working on the company’s internal robotics and autonomy efforts has joined Tesla to help develop its Optimus humanoid robot.
Yilun Chen shared the update on LinkedIn, saying he wrapped up his time at Apple last week. He described the period as an “unforgettable chapter,” noting he worked on a mix of engineering, research and early product prototyping roles that helped him grow from an individual contributor into a tech lead. “I’m sincerely grateful for the opportunities to work on so many amazing projects and products across the company,” he wrote.
His LinkedIn profile shows a deep background in robotics and AI inside Apple. From January 2025 to November 2025, Chen worked as a Research Scientist on the Apple Robotics Research Team, focusing on embodied AI. His listed work includes robotics foundation models, sim-to-real transfer, visual-language-action systems, dexterous manipulation and humanoid whole-body control.
Before that, he spent January 2022 to January 2025 as a Machine Learning Engineer in Apple’s Special Projects Group, the internal division known for handling Apple’s most confidential initiatives. There, he worked on photorealistic scene generation, generative modeling of agent behaviour and reinforcement learning training for autonomy systems.
In his post, Chen hinted that some of the projects he helped build at Apple have yet to be revealed publicly. “Wait for the surprise,” he said.
Chen said he has now begun a “new chapter” at Tesla, joining the Optimus AI team to focus on humanoid robots. He called humanoids “the ultimate dream of our generation” and said recent progress in large language models and physical AI make that dream feel within reach.
He also said his visit to Tesla’s Optimus lab left a strong impression. “I was totally blown away by the scale and sophistication of the Optimus lab and deep dedication of people,” he wrote. His first week, he added, has been filled with direct communication across levels, spontaneous technical discussions and “super fast iterations.”
“You can feel the energy to change the world here. I really like it so far,” Chen concluded.
Apple reorganized its robotics division seven months ago, shifting it out of AI chief John Giannandrea’s control and into the hardware group. The move followed CEO Tim Cook’s concerns over slow AI progress and internal friction, leading to Mike Rockwell taking over Siri and reporting to Craig Federighi.
Senior VP John Ternus (who is rumoured to replace Cook as CEO one day) now oversees robotics as Apple pushes deeper into home robot concepts, including a tabletop device with a tilting, iPad-style display. The shakeup was meant to tighten coordination between Apple’s AI and hardware teams as competition heats up. It’s unknown what Chen was working on, but if anything comes out soon, we’ll know he likely was involved so far. Apple is rumoured to launch some sort of tabletop robot, possibly next year.
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