UMA: Former Tesla Engineer Optimus Launches Humanoid Robot 'Northstar' in Paris

Rémi Cadène, a former researcher involved in the development of Tesla's humanoid robot Optimus, has decided to take on a new challenge in the robotics sector, this time in Europe. His goal is to build a competitor to major American and Chinese projects through UMA, a Paris-based startup that has introduced Northstar, a lightweight humanoid robot powered by artificial intelligence.

Cadène worked for about 3 years at Tesla within the Autopilot group, focusing on AI systems related to assisted driving and the Optimus program. In early 2024, he left the company to join Hugging Face, where he led the development of LeRobot, an open-source robotics platform that quickly became an important tool for many researchers and developers in the industry.

In December 2025, UMA emerged from stealth mode with a founding team that includes, in addition to Cadène, former Hugging Face engineer Simon Alibert and robot designer Rob Knight. The company has received funding from several venture capital firms and the support of key figures in the tech world, including Yann LeCun, Olivier Pomel, and Thomas Wolf.

Starting with the fundamentals

Prototype Version 0 AI, Software, Hardware A small team, 9 months Designed and assembled in Paris at @UMA_Robots
pic.twitter.com/BJvtpgHctL
-- Remi Cadene (@RemiCadene)
July 7, 2026

Further details on UMA: the project of the former Tesla engineer UMA's strategy aims to start from the European market, particularly in the fields of industrial manufacturing, logistics, and, in the future, domestic assistance. According to Cadène, the aging European population and high labor costs could create a strong demand for robots capable of performing physical tasks. The startup claims to already be in touch with about 50 potential clients interested in possible applications.

However, the project is still in its early stages and does not yet have a commercially available product. The comparison with Tesla is inevitable: Elon Musk's company has big ambitions for Optimus, but so far it has not achieved significant deployment beyond internal testing. Other players, such as Figure and the collaboration between Hyundai and Boston Dynamics, have demonstrated more concrete industrial applications.

For UMA, the main competence could be software: the robots' ability to understand their surrounding environment, learn, and interact autonomously will likely be the decisive factor for the success of the new generation of humanoids.