Did Tesla receive an order for 10,000 robots? Musk: It's fake.

Image source: Jiemian News

On September 18th local time, in response to recent reports that the US plant-based pharmaceutical company PharmAGRI had signed a letter of intent with Tesla to deploy up to 10,000 Optimus Gen3+ humanoid robots in its self-owned farms and prescription drug production processes, Elon Musk briefly replied on social media, "It's fake."

It is reported that Tesla is currently producing Optimus 2.5 robots on the pilot production line at its US factory.

Regarding the progress of Optimus 3, during the Q2 earnings conference call this year, Tesla stated that the design of Optimus 3 is basically finalized, and it is actively promoting the release of the prototype and the mass production plan, which is expected to be officially implemented by the end of this year.

On September 17th, TeslaAI's official Weibo quoted Musk's latest statement, saying that the design of Tesla's third-generation humanoid robot (Optimus 3) will feature fine motor skills similar to those of humans. This means it needs to have a pair of extremely complex and dexterous hands, an AI brain capable of exploring and understanding the real world, and it must be able to achieve large-scale mass production. Looking across the entire industry, hardly anyone can balance these three aspects, and this is precisely the key challenge.

Musk said that he is currently devoting more energy to the humanoid robot project than to any other single project. "We need to overcome all the challenges in real-world AI, electrical and mechanical engineering, and the supply chain and production. Since the supply chain for humanoid robots hardly exists at present, we have to start from scratch and conduct large-scale vertical integration. None of the actuators for Tesla's humanoid robot can be directly sourced from the existing supply chain. But I believe that once successful, Tesla's humanoid robot will be the greatest product of all time."

On August 20th, 2021, at the first Tesla AI Day, Musk first introduced the concept of Tesla's humanoid robot, Tesla Bot, which is now known as Optimus.

Since 2025, Tesla has adjusted the R & D path for Optimus, fully switching to a pure vision AI training solution and abandoning the traditional motion capture suit. Employees wear camera helmets during daily operations, and the AI learns skills autonomously by observing the videos. This new technological path has significantly reduced the data collection cost and increased the training efficiency several times.

In June this year, Musk said that Optimus 3 had completed deep integration with Grok, the voice assistant of xAI. The interaction method has been further upgraded. It is reported that the Grok voice system installed on Optimus 3 uses multi-modal perception technology, which can distinguish different family members through voiceprint recognition and automatically adjust the response strategy according to the conversation scenario.

In March this year, Musk said that Tesla's goal in 2025 is to produce 5,000 Optimus robots, and it plans to increase the production volume tenfold to 50,000 units in 2026.

In September, Tesla elevated Optimus to a core strategic position in its "Master Plan 4.0". Musk boldly predicted that in the future, 80% of Tesla's value may come from the Optimus business. The third-generation Optimus 3 has solved the problem of hand flexibility and is equipped with an AI brain. It is planned to reach a production capacity of 50,000 - 100,000 units in 2026 and strive for 1 million units in 2027.

According to the reference pictures of the new version of the Optimus humanoid robot released by TeslaAI's official Weibo on September 8th, the robot bears the Tesla logo, and its main body is in a rich gold color scheme. It has a more minimalist and refined appearance and a smaller overall volume. It is worth noting that the hand joints of the robot are hidden, and the hand lines are smoother, closer to those of humans.

However, Musk replied to a netizen, "We haven't shown Optimus V3 yet." It is expected that the Tesla robot shown in the official Weibo pictures is the 2.5 version.

According to Goldman Sachs' prediction, the global humanoid robot market will reach $154 billion by 2035, with a compound annual growth rate of sales up to 94%. CITIC Securities predicts that the global humanoid robot market will exceed 750 billion yuan by 2030, and China's supply chain is expected to capture more than 30% of the market share thanks to its technological and cost advantages.

This article is from the WeChat public account "Jiemian News". The author is Peng Peng. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.