Tesla IT executive Raj Jegannathan exits months after named to sales role | Company News

Written by: Dana Hull and Kara Carlson

Tesla Inc.’s North American sales chief is leaving the electric vehicle maker, exiting a position that saw significant turnover last year.

Tesla vice president Raj Jegannathan, who was tapped last year to oversee sales in the region, said in a LinkedIn post that he was parting ways with the company.

He is the latest prominent executive to leave the Elon Musk-led electric vehicle maker, which has faced several departures among key leaders amid back-to-back annual declines in vehicle deliveries.

Omead Afshar, Musk’s longtime confidant, left last year after overseeing sales and production in North America. Milan Kovac, the engineering lead for Tesla’s Optimus robot program, and David Lau, who ran the software for more than a decade, also left the company in 2025.

Jegannathan, who is also responsible for IT and data functions, including AI infrastructure, took on the sales role shortly after longtime Tesla executive Troy Jones left the company in July.

Tesla is facing a broader slowdown in EV demand in the US, and Musk is increasingly prioritizing investments in artificial intelligence, autonomous driving and humanoid robots. Tesla ceded its position as the world’s largest seller of electric vehicles to China’s BYD Co. last year.