Key Takeaways
- Shares of carmaker and robotics company Tesla rallied on Musk’s comments Thursday about the timeline for the public sale of Optimus robots.
- Progress toward robot sales would put the CEO on his way to unlock his trillion-dollar pay package.
The future of robotics, Elon Musk is here to tell you, is on its way.
The Tesla (TSLA) CEO on Thursday said the company’s Optimus robots will be available to the public as soon as 2027. “By the end of next year I think we’d be selling humanoid robots to the public,” he said in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Humanoid robotics will advance very quickly.”
Investors are applauding the anticipated rollout of Tesla’s humanoid robots, which would mean progress toward one of the performance-based targets—regarding the number of Optimus robots sold—that eventually would unlock Musk’s trillion-dollar pay package.
WHY THIS MATTERS TO YOU
If Tesla meets the timeline Musk outlined today, an Optimus robot could be performing your chores as soon as late next year.
The news may also fire up anticipation ahead of the company’s fourth quarter earnings report, which is expected after the market’s close next week Wednesday. Shares of Tesla were recently up nearly 4% in afternoon trading. Read Investopedia’s full coverage of today’s action here.
Musk said that Optimus robots are performing “simple tasks” at Tesla’s factories now. He expects them to be doing more complex tasks by the end of this year. Musk said in 2024 that the company would have “thousands” of those robots in Tesla factories by the end of last year.
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The CEO appears to be advancing on other performance milestones tied to his compensation package: Musk said that Tesla’s robotaxis, already in a few cities, will “be very widespread” in the U.S. by the end of this year. He hopes to get approval for them in Europe next month, and possibly “similar timing” for China.
He pressed folks at Davos to be “optimistic” about the future. Musk’s departing words for the masses: “Generally, I think, for quality of life, it is actually better to err on the side of being an optimist and wrong, rather than a pessimist and right.”