A tweet landed Tesla's AI chief, Ashok Eluswami, a job, Elon Musk recounted the story

Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently recounted how a simple social media post shaped Tesla's Artificial Intelligence (AI) team. It led to the addition of talent like Ashok Eluswami, who today heads Tesla's Autopilot and AI unit.

This story dates back to 2015, when Musk posted on Twitter (now X) that Tesla was "expanding the Autopilot software team" to achieve "generalized full autonomy." He also invited applications directly via email.

The Tweet That Changed an Engineer's Life

Recently, this old tweet went viral on X when a user wrote, "The tweet that led to Ashok applying and landing a job at Tesla." Elon Musk confirmed that this tweet was part of Tesla's strategy to build its AI team from the ground up.

Musk wrote, "A tweet or post was how I launched dozens of Tesla startup-like projects. Tesla has acquired very few companies. 90 percent of our growth is organic. We didn't play on core strengths, but built them ourselves."

Hiring Talent Directly Through Social Media

This example demonstrates Musk's preference for using social media to reach talent directly rather than through traditional methods. That 2015 tweet proved to be the foundation of Tesla's Autopilot AI team, which today forms the core of the company's electric and self-driving technology.

Elon Musk's Historic Tweet

Musk tweeted, "The Autopilot software team at Tesla is being comprehensively prepared to achieve full autonomy. If interested, contact autopilot@teslamotors.com."

Who is Ashok Eluswami?

Ashok Eluswami is currently the director of Tesla's Autopilot software division and was the first engineer to join the company's AI team. He studied at Carnegie Mellon University and joined Tesla in 2015 after responding to Elon Musk's tweet.

Prior to Tesla, Ashok worked with companies like WABCO Vehicle Control Systems and Volkswagen. Under his leadership, Tesla's Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD) systems have become central to the company's autonomous vehicle vision.

Musk has publicly praised Eluswami and his team several times for taking Tesla a step closer to fully self-driving technology.