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

By Dana Hull and Kara Carlson

 

Tesla Inc.’s head of sales for North America is leaving the electric-vehicle maker, exiting a position that’s seen substantial turnover in the past year. 

 

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

 

He’s the latest prominent executive to leave the Elon Musk-led EV maker, which has seen several departures among key leaders in the midst of back-to-back annual declines in vehicle deliveries.

 

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

 

 

Jegannathan, who also had responsibility for IT and data functions, including AI infrastructure, took the sales role shortly after long-time Tesla executive Troy Jones left the company in July. 

 

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