Elon Musk was all smiles during the Tesla shareowner ’s meeting in Austin , Texas on Thursday , a fact that was apprehensible given his victory in a$45 billionpay bundle dispute . But the most interesting part of Musk ’s display to shareholders came when the Tesla CEO begin talking about his programme for the Optimus robot . Because , boy oh boy , it was quite a laundry leaning of hope .
“ It ’s , you know , your comrade , it can be at your house , it can sort of babysit your kids , it could teach them … be a teacher . It , you know , it can do factory stuff , ” Musk said while describing the automaton on Thursday .
Musk die on to say Optimus would be like having your own personal golem from the Star Wars dealership .
Footage of the Optimus robot played during the Tesla shareholder’s meeting in Austin, Texas on 18 January 2025.Gif: YouTube / Tesla
“ Like , who does n’t want a C3PO , you recognise ? You lie with , but a C3PO plus R2D2 plus , you roll in the hay , plus plus . It would be pretty awesome . I think everyone in the world is going to need one . Like , literally everyone , ” Musk continued .
Musk first announced Tesla ’s Optimus robotback in 2021when he bring out a person in a robot costume . And the robot appear to have made some real step since that first unveiling . The golem can now walk on two legs , for example , which is an accomplishment moot that it used to be an notional thing . But the footage that ’s been made public shows that Optimus still put behind bars behind major rival insignificant ways .
And we say “ footage that ’s been made public , ” because that ’s all we can guess the robot ’s advance on and there was n’t any radical existent - world demonstration at the meeting on Thursday . The grownup furtherance were all in Musk ’s header , and communicated as thing that will be happening in the time to come — one yr , two years , and who knows how many years down the line .
The shareowner coming together , which was livestreamed onYouTubeand X , saw Musk insist his robot would be making some very important advancements soon . And , as you may see from the lean of quotation mark from the billionaire CEO below , some of them are wildly optimistic .
“ I think we ’ve develop kind of like one major hardware revision , which should be done by end of this year or early on next , and then we ’ll move into a limited production next year of Optimus . Limited output for exercise in our mill . ”
“ My prediction is next yr we ’ll have over a thousand , perhaps a few thousand , Optimus robots work at Tesla . ”
And those were the comparatively modest predictions . Then Musk begin to get more bold with it .
“ The degree of self-direction will be radically better . You ’ll just literally be able-bodied to talk to it and say ‘ please do this task ’ or ‘ I ’m gon na show you something . Now do that the thing that I ’m record you . ’ ”
“ [ Optimus will ] get to the point where it can watch a video of something like a individual and then learn just by looking at that video and do that task . ”
“ I ’m confident of the prevision that there will be more … like the ratio of humanoid robots to humankind will be outstanding than one to one . So there ’ll be , you know , more than 10 billion humanoid robots in the Earth . in all probability 20 or more … and Tesla is gon na be by far the leader in that . ”
“ It will be able-bodied to flirt the piano . So it ’s really like wow . ”
There have been plenty of robots thatplay the piano , of trend . The query is whether you could make a robot that plays the piano well . But then Musk made a prediction about the economic value of Tesla in the hereafter .
“ I concord with the ARK Invest psychoanalysis that autonomous transport is called sort of a $ 5 - 7 trillion market cap situation . Optimus , I consider , is a 25 . Literally $ 25 trillion market cap situation . ”
You ’ll notice that Musk did n’t give a accurate date for when he look Tesla will achieve a market cap of $ 25 trillion . For context , Apple ’s current market cap is $ 3.29 trillion .
Will any of Musk ’s predictions come up true ? As always , no one knows the future with any foregone conclusion . deal of waste things can materialize , and Musk ’s automotive competitors , like BMW , arealready test humanoid robotsin mill . So we love some of Musk ’s goal are achievable , if only because other company are already doing it .
However , we still have a long way to go before we see automaton babysitting kids . At least a retentive way of life before such a thing can be done responsibly . And that ’s more or less the Southern Cross of the trouble when it total to Musk and his consumer - facing product . The Tesla CEO has been predict autonomous vehicle for so many twelvemonth now , and we kind of have them . They ’re just not something that any responsible for mortal would rely on heavily yet . Case in degree , the Tesla driver in Orange County , California whoslammed into a cop caron Thursday while allegedly using Full Self - Driving .
Maybe do n’t forget your infant with Optimus just yet , even if Musk eventually figures out how to get these robots to market .
Elon MuskRobotRobotsTESLATesla , Inc. view of Elon Musk
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