Musk specifies locations for his ambitious humanoid robot production, starting with a 1-million-unit line in Fremont and a 10-million-unit line at a Gigafactory, while reiterating claims of a "billion a year" capacity.
A recent LA Times report highlights the massive, low-tech effort to gather real-world data for robots. This data bottleneck is the central challenge in robotics, and top companies are making wildly different bets on how to solve it—from human-video capture and teleoperation to massive simulation.
In a CNBC interview, Tesla Board Chair Robyn Denholm claimed the Optimus robot has achieved a key dexterity milestone: folding laundry. This comes as Tesla aims for a Q1 2026 "production-intent" V3 prototype.
In a new technical deep-dive, Tesla's VP of AI and Optimus lead Ashok Elluswamy details the end-to-end neural network strategy for FSD, confirming the same "neural world simulator" and architecture will "seamlessly transfer" to its humanoid robot.
Speaking at MIT, Yann LeCun argued the "big secret" of the humanoid industry is that companies lack the fundamental AI breakthroughs—specifically "world models"—needed to make robots "generally useful" in domestic settings.