Elon Musk says Optimus robots may make Tesla $25 trillion firm

All the worth of the S&P 500 at present stands at $45.5 trillion, in keeping with FactSet. Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed on Thursday that his firm’s Optimus humanoid robots may ultimately make the automaker price greater than half of that.

Musk, who characterised himself as “pathologically optimistic” on the 2024 annual shareholder assembly in Austin, Texas, stated Tesla is embarking on not only a “new chapter” in its life, however is about to jot down a completely “new guide.” Optimus seems to be one of many important characters.

Tesla first revealed its plans to work on humanoid robots in 2021 at an AI Day occasion, trotting out a dancer in a unitard that seemed like a glossy, androgynous robotic.

In January, Tesla confirmed off Optimus robots folding laundry in a demo video that was instantly criticized by robotics engineers for being misleading. The robots weren’t autonomous, however had been slightly being operated with people on the controls.

On the shareholder occasion on Thursday, Musk did not disclose precisely what Optimus can do at this time. He instructed the robots some day will carry out like R2-D2 and C-3PO in Star Wars. They might prepare dinner or clear for you, do manufacturing unit work, and even train your kids, Musk instructed.

As for shareholder worth, Musk stated Optimus may very well be the catalyst for lifting Tesla’s market cap to $25 trillion sometime.

Chatting with a crowd consisting largely of fawning fanboys in an auditorium on the Gigafactory, Musk promised Tesla would transfer into “restricted manufacturing” of Optimus in 2025 and take a look at out humanoid robots in its personal factories subsequent yr.

The corporate, he predicted, can have “over 1,000, or just a few thousand, Optimus robots working at Tesla” in 2025.

That is all far-out stuff even for Musk, who’s infamous for making formidable guarantees to buyers and prospects that do not pan out — from creating software program that may flip an current Tesla right into a self-driving automobile with an add, to EV battery swapping stations.

Attending to a $25 trillion market cap would imply that Tesla could be price about eight occasions Apple’s worth at this time. The iPhone maker is at present the world’s largest firm by market cap, simply forward of Microsoft.

At Thursday’s shut, Tesla was valued at about $580 billion, making it the tenth most useful firm within the S&P 500.

Musk did not present a timeframe for reaching $25 trillion. He did say that autonomous automobiles may get the corporate to a market cap of $5 trillion to $7 trillion.

Musk stated he agreed with numbers from long-time Tesla bull Cathie Wooden, the CEO of ARK Make investments. This week, ARK put a $2,600 value goal on Tesla’s inventory by 2029, betting on a business robotaxi enterprise that the corporate has but to enter.

Wooden’s value goal equals a market cap for Tesla of over $8 trillion.

Musk’s feedback on the annual assembly adopted the shareholder vote to reinstate the CEO’s $56 billion pay plan, 5 months after a Delaware courtroom ordered the corporate to rescind the package deal. The group cheered when the proposal was learn aloud, and when preliminary outcomes had been introduced.

Taking the stage following the readout of the shareholder votes, Musk stated, “I simply wish to begin off by saying sizzling d—! I really like you guys.”

Tesla shares have dropped 27% this yr as the corporate reckons with a gross sales decline that is tied partly to an getting old lineup of electrical automobiles and elevated competitors in China. The corporate has additionally carried out steep layoffs. Musk has inspired buyers to look previous the present state of the enterprise and extra towards a way forward for autonomous driving, robots and synthetic intelligence.

Amongst his boldest claims on Thursday was Musk’s declaration that Tesla had superior to date in creating silicon that it is surpassed Nvidia in the case of inference, or the method that educated machine studying fashions use to attract conclusions from new information.

Nvidia shares have soared virtually nine-fold for the reason that finish of 2022, pushed by demand for its AI chips. The corporate is now price about $3.2 trillion.

One concern swirling round Musk is his concentrate on Tesla given all of his different commitments. He owns and runs social media firm X, is CEO of SpaceX, and based The Boring Co. and Neuralink. He launched one other startup, xAI, in March final yr and the corporate just lately raised $6 billion in enterprise funding.

Musk was requested by a shareholder on the assembly how necessary he’s, personally, to the way forward for Tesla.

“I am a useful accelerant to that future,” he stated, emphasizing his position in innovation.

He stated that, in the case of humanoid robots, different firms, together with tech startups, are going after the market. Opponents embrace Boston Dynamics, Agility, Neura and Apptronik.

“What actually issues is, can we be a lot sooner than everybody else and our product be performed just a few years earlier than theirs and be higher,” Musk stated.

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