# Adnan Esmail

> Adnan Esmail is a co-founder of Physical Intelligence and a former senior engineering leader at Anduril. After working on vehicle hardware and Autopilot systems at Tesla, he joined Anduril in 2018 and grew its product engineering organization to 550 people before leaving in 2024. He now helps develop general-purpose models for robots.

- **Role:** Co-founder and head of hardware, Physical Intelligence
- **Organizations:** Physical Intelligence, Anduril Industries, Tesla, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- **Education:** Bachelor's degree; fields reported as mechanical engineering, physics, electrical engineering and computer science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- **Known for:** Helped grow Anduril product engineering to 550 engineers working on 30 products across 15 families by March 2024, according to his account., Co-founded Physical Intelligence in 2024., Credited on Physical Intelligence's pi-zero generalist robot policy and 2026 research into rapid online robot learning.

## Career timeline

- **Before 2018** — Worked on flood disaster relief in Pakistan, then became a founding engineer at a startup developing affordable genome sequencing technology, according to his first-person essay.
- **Before 2018** — Worked at Tesla on Model X Falcon wing doors, electromechanical architecture, Autopilot sensors and future vehicle technologies.
- **2018** — Joined Anduril in September after a July conversation with founder Palmer Luckey.
- **2022** — Became SVP of Engineering at Anduril in June; his department then had 164 people, by his account.
- **2024** — Left Anduril in March after the department reached 550 engineers and co-founded Physical Intelligence.
- **2024** — Credited on Physical Intelligence's first generalist robot policy, pi-zero.
- **2025** — Published a detailed first-person essay, 'The Amusement Park for Engineers,' in Colossus.
- **2026** — Named among authors of Physical Intelligence research on reinforcement learning tokens and the pi-0.7 model.

## Achievements

- Helped grow Anduril product engineering to 550 engineers working on 30 products across 15 families by March 2024, according to his account.
- Co-founded Physical Intelligence in 2024.
- Credited on Physical Intelligence's pi-zero generalist robot policy and 2026 research into rapid online robot learning.
- Published a first-person account of Anduril's product engineering approach in Colossus in June 2025.

## Latest updates

- **2026-04** — Listed among contributors to Physical Intelligence's pi-0.7 model release.
- **2026-03** — Co-authored Physical Intelligence research on reinforcement learning tokens for faster precision manipulation.
- **2026-02** — Physical Intelligence outlined its plan for a reusable physical intelligence layer and partner deployments.
- **2025-06** — Published 'The Amusement Park for Engineers' in Colossus.

## Links

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adnanesmail
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/adnan_esm

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/adnan-esmail
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-09-29