Ahead of the company's earnings release on Tuesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that the company will begin selling its humanoid robot, Optimus, in 2026. In fact, Optimus has already begun autonomously performing tasks such as handling batteries in one of Tesla's facilities, according to Tesla's earnings report.
“Tesla will be building a small number of really useful humanoid robots for its own internal use next year, and then mass producing them for other companies, hopefully in 2026,” the executive said. Post to X.
These dates are rough, but take them with a pinch of salt: A lot can happen between now and then, and if Optimus is truly delayed, it wouldn't be the first time Musk's products have been plagued by dynamic timelines. Quite early on, Musk suggested production of the humanoid could begin as early as 2023.
Tesla is certainly devoting significant resources to this effort. As former Tesla Optimus leader Chris Waltey told me recently, “And Elon [Musk] “We should build a humanoid. My team was appointed to lead that. I led the internal recruiting for that team. Everything you saw at AI Day was the result of that effort,” he added. “At some point, [Optimus] It was the biggest initiative in the company.”
The market has also changed significantly since Optimus unveiled Spandex in 2021. Some credit Tesla's announcement with incentivizing some of its larger competitors to publicly announce their own efforts sooner than usual.
Overall, robotics has benefited from the pandemic. Labor shortages have led to a surge in investment, sparking a renaissance in industrial automation, and more recently, an explosion of interest in generative AI, further accelerating the industry and the push towards “general-purpose” robots.
But while the demo may be impressive, there is still a lot of work to be done between today's systems and true general-purpose robots. The gap between today's ChatGPT products and synthetic systems that can behave and learn like humans is much larger than it might first appear.
While this is primarily a software/AI problem, there is also a lot of work to be done to create mechatronic systems that can perform these actions at scale. The industry is increasingly looking to humanoid form factors to fill the gap. We designed the world for humans, so why not design robots for it?
Tesla isn't the first company to begin developing a humanoid form factor, nor is it the most advanced based on the available evidence, but while being first to market in this high-tech field is certainly significant, the story of humanoid robots is only just beginning.
Some of the companies listed below may not make the cut, and some you've never heard of may take their place. Here's the situation as of July 2024:
1x
Image credit: 1X
This Norwegian startup made waves in 2023 with a $23.5 million funding round. The list of investors was even more impressive than the amount, with backing from Tiger Global and OpenAI in particular. It was a significant show of confidence from the GPT makers and signaled their interest in bringing the platform to a physical incarnation.
1X raised $100 million in a Series B in January and has recently made some big-name hires from big companies like BMW and Tesla. A recent video shows a smiling, wheeled robot called “Eve” responding to voice commands and performing household chores like cleaning.
Notably, the company's name reflects its commitment to demoing robots at 1x speed — not labeling the sped-up videos is one of many tricks companies can use to make their projects seem more advanced than they are.
Agility
Screenshot image credit: Agility Robotics /
Agility was an early entrant in the space, and as a result, its distinctive bipedal robot, Digit, is already on the path to commercialization faster than anyone else in the space: After trials with a number of partners, including Amazon, the company announced in June that its humanoid was the first robot to move beyond the pilot stage.
Digit's first job isn't glamorous, but in some ways that's what it's all about: The robot started out hauling plastic tote bags at a Spanx factory in Georgia.
Applitronic
Image credit: Apptronik/Mercedes
The Austin-based company has been working on its humanoid robots for some time now, thanks to its Valkyrie partnership with NASA, and in March it announced it had begun testing in a warehouse with Mercedes-Benz.
Boston Dynamics
Image credit: Boston Dynamics
Boston Dynamics is both a pioneer and a newcomer in this field: the original hydraulic Atlas dates back to 2013. The company discontinued the system in April, but introduced an electric version the next day, surprising many in the industry with the strength and flexibility of the system's actuators.
So far, only a 40-second video has been released showing the robot in action, and CEO Robert Prater told TechCrunch at the time that parent company Hyundai planned to start testing the robots in its factories sometime in 2025, but full-scale production was still a few years away.
shape
Image credit: Figure
In February, Figure announced a massive $675 million funding round from investors including Microsoft, OpenAI, Amazon, Nvidia and Intel Capital. The round gave the South Bay company a post-funding valuation of $2.6 billion. Earlier this year, Figure announced that its 01 robot would be tested at a BMW factory in South Carolina. Video of the robot in that setting debuted earlier this month.
Sanctuary AI
Image credit: Sanctuary AI
In April, Sanctuary AI announced it was beginning pilot work with automaker Magna. Phoenix is Sanctuary AI's first bipedal humanoid, and early models have already been deployed in Canadian retail stores.