Tesla Optimus Gets Called the Greatest Product Ever

Tesla Optimus will be the greatest product humanity has made and will deliver more value than the iPhone, investor Jason Calacanis said on This Week in Startups on August 25 after a private Tesla demo, predicting 1 billion robots in the world by 2036.

“Optimus is going to be the greatest product ever made by humanity,” Calacanis said on episode 2329. It will sell and provide more value than the iPhone.” He later added, “I will guarantee you we will be sitting here in 10 years and there will be 1 billion Optimuses in the world. I didn’t say 1 million, I didn’t say 10 million, I didn’t say 100 million. I said 1 billion.

The comments came after he watched Beijing’s World Humanoid Robot Games and compared that field with a Tesla demo that has not been shown in public. Calacanis said Tesla’s hardware is about one and a half generations ahead of the robots he saw compete, with a substantially more advanced brain, and that Optimus would win 35 of the 51 events. Reuters put this year’s Games at more than 2,000 robots from 666 teams, covering running, tennis, factory work, and restaurant service.

That 1 billion line is the same scale he used after an early Optimus 3 look in January, when he said people would forget Tesla ever made a car. Tesla has since torn out the Fremont Model S and Model X line to make room for Optimus, with Musk aiming at 1 million robots a year there and a larger Texas plant later. Musk has also called Optimus the hardest product Tesla has tried to scale, because the company has to build a new supply chain.

A 1 billion fleet by 2036 is Calacanis talking, not a Tesla delivery target. The company has not put that number on a timeline of its own. What Tesla has said is Fremont first, Texas next, and a slow start on a robot that still has not had its public Optimus 3 reveal.