Elon Musk is discovering just how difficult it is to build a robot that can walk, talk, and think like a human.
The Tesla CEO said during the automaker's second-quarter earnings call on Wednesday that building Optimus, a humanoid robot, is a "very complex problem to solve," and "no one's ever achieved this."
While Musk said he believes Optimus will be the "biggest product ever," he flagged "many challenges" in designing it to be dexterous, reliable, durable, and safe.
For example, he said that he wants Optimus to have at least the same dexterity as a person, but the "human hand is an incredible thing."
He pointed out that "there is no supply chain" for Optimus, so Tesla has had to build one from scratch and produce some parts in-house. The automaker has to not only secure enough AI chips but also "solve memory, logic, and packaging" to make Optimus a success, he added.
Musk also underlined how tough it will be to crank out huge numbers of the robots.
"This is going to be the hardest product to scale manufacturing that we've ever made at Tesla," he said.
Musk explained that's because "everything on the robot is new," which makes it much harder to ramp up production.
The world's richest man and CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX, known for giving overly ambitious timelines, said he was managing expectations.
"I just want to make sure to calibrate people correctly," Musk said.
Tesla didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Musk has previously described the magnitude of the task at hand. This time last year, he spoke about how Tesla has to design everything from the motor and gearbox to the controls and sensors, not to mention train Optimus. Yet he also said he'd be "shocked" if Tesla wasn't making 100,000 robots a month in five years' time.
Notably, Tesla described its plans for "volume" and "mass" production of Optimus in its earnings presentation last quarter, but didn't use those terms in Wednesday's presentation.
Musk stands to gain handsomely from making Optimus a success. One of the milestones he must reach to unlock the full value of his latest compensation agreement is delivering one million Optimus robots in the next decade.
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Theron Mohamed is a London-based correspondent on the Trending team at Business Insider. His coverage spans finance, investing, wealth, markets, and the economy.Theron joined BI in 2019 as a reporter at Markets Insider and rose to the rank of correspondent before moving to the Trending team in 2024. He previously covered tech, media, and telecom stocks for Investors Chronicle magazine and had a brief stint on the Financial Times' Data team. He interned at the Wall Street Journal in New York where he primarily wrote for Heard on the Street.Theron has freelanced for The Independent, The Telegraph, WIRED, and several smaller publications. He holds an undergraduate degree in geography from the London School of Economics, and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University.Theron often covers Warren Buffett, Michael Burry, Jeremy Grantham and other top-flight investors. He also writes about the world's wealthiest people and shares financial advice from all manner of rich and successful people.Email Theron at [email protected] and follow him on X @theron_mohamed.Expertise
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