Image: Tesla
Tesla’s Optimus ambitions are quickly shifting from flashy demos to something far more tangible. According to a growing list of open roles on Tesla’s Careers page, the company now has roughly 110 active job listings tied directly to its Optimus humanoid robot program — a clear sign the company is staffing up aggressively as production draws closer.
The hiring push spans hardware, software, AI, manufacturing, and robotics roles, underscoring just how broad Optimus has become inside Tesla. This isn’t a skunkworks side project anymore. It’s shaping up to be a full-blown product line that Tesla clearly believes could rival — or even surpass — its automotive business in the long run.
Elon Musk laid out the company’s Optimus timeline during Tesla’s Q3 2025 earnings call earlier this fall, offering unusually concrete targets. Speaking about Optimus version 3, Musk said, “The new hand is an incredible piece of engineering. We’ll have a production-intent prototype ready to show in February or March 2026. Then we’re going to build a one-million-unit production line, with a hopeful production start by the end of 2026.” He also teased that the robot will look so lifelike that “you’ll need to poke it to believe it’s an actual robot.”
Behind the scenes, Tesla is already laying the groundwork to make that vision real. Last month, the company broke ground on a massive new Optimus manufacturing facility at Gigafactory Texas. Pilot production of Optimus V3 units is already underway at Tesla’s Fremont Factory, where the company plans to ramp toward a one-million-unit annual production line by late 2026. The much larger Giga Texas line is expected to come online in 2027, with a staggering long-term capacity target of 10 million robots per year.
Tesla has also been quietly stacking talent. The company recently poached AI engineer Yilun Chen from Apple to bolster its Optimus team, while sharing fresh footage earlier this month showing an Optimus prototype jogging smoothly across a lab floor — a small clip that spoke volumes about how far the robot has come.
Taken together, the hiring surge, factory build-out, and increasingly confident timelines suggest Optimus is nearing a pivotal moment. If Tesla can execute, 2026 may be the year Optimus steps out of the lab and into the real world.
