“My prediction is next year we’ll have over a thousand, maybe a few thousand, Optimus robots working at Tesla.”
https://x.com/SmokeAwayyy/status/1801400924096839732
This was a prediction made during the Tesla 2024 Annual Stockholder Meeting.
I take "working" to mean autonomously deployed in factories and performing productive labor.
Update 2025-07-22 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The creator has clarified that the definition of "working" is not limited to factories.
The key criterion is autonomously performing productive labor for Tesla.
This can include work in other locations, such as Tesla Diners or showrooms.
1,000
3.00
@Alfie does this count as #1? The Tesla Diner has officially opened and they have Optimus serving popcorn for hours https://x.com/WholeMarsBlog/status/1947476770829308363 & https://x.com/BLKMDL3/status/1947534250007531979
@MarkosGiannopoulos Interesting, not what I would have expected it's first job to be but assuming the reporting on twitter is accurate I'd say this counts.
The description does say "deployed in factories" but I previously agreed that working in show rooms would count. I think the important part (which is more true to what Elon said originally anyway) is autonomously performing productive labor for Tesla and serving popcorn fits that description for me.
@MolbyDick I'll guess I will just flag that being too high or too low in your estimated probability of something happening, can be an indication that one is not well calibrated.
So Elmo did a conference where he made bold promises for the future and people are reassured? Like, obviously, this is a guy that keeps his word and has a record of correct predictions....
@SimonWestlake I'll try to resolve as soon as possible, hopefully it'll be a clear yes or no at the end of the year but I could maybe wait until till mid to late January if we were waiting on more news.
For anyone who wants to go a bit bigger and further out with their bet:
https://manifold.markets/DavidFWatson/will-there-be-over-10000-optimus-ro
I don't think they'll solve the logistics issues (deploy, storage, charging, control, etc) of having that many robots working by then, let alone a manufacturing and assembly up for Optimus. Even if the entire Optimus assembly line is staffed by Optimus robots they'll spend a year doing it.
Isn't this incredibly likely? There are 140,000 salaried workers at Tesla as of 2023, only a few thousand of these are engineers, most are in assembly roles within factories.
If you take the simplest 1% of tasks (not jobs, just tasks) then you can introduce robotic labor for ~170-200 workers in each of their 6 factories and hit this target.
If these bots simply move boxes between shelves and perform other minimally complex actions they are likely to hit this number.
There's also a strong incentive to do so as a way of gathering training data for the Optimus platform.
The main problem is that basically wherever you can use humanoid robots, you'll improve efficiency and reduce cost by using a different shape. Also the safety aspects of humanoid robots are terrible. Do you want a potentially unstable several hundred kg hard thing moving freely around humans? No? Then you lose the last advantage of human shape. So to me the most likely scenario for a YES resolution is Tesla doing that as a marketing gimmick and/or to use the robots nobody wants to buy.