Tesla Is Building a Bigger Optimus Factory in Austin, CFO Says

Credit: Tesla

Tesla has started building a second Optimus factory in Austin, and it will be able to make far more humanoid robots than the company’s line in Fremont, chief financial officer Vaibhav Taneja said on Tesla’s Q3 2026 earnings call on October 21. Fremont only just began what Tesla calls production-quality builds, as we reported in our story on Optimus production starting in Fremont.

Taneja brought up the Austin site after an analyst asked about ramping Optimus production for training before the robot’s hands are finished. Elon Musk answered first, saying “we’re building robots that do not have perfected hands” while Tesla works on training, the supply chain and the production system in parallel. Taneja then added, “Yeah, and you should know that not only the Fremont factory, we’ve also started constructing a factory here in Austin, which would be able to do a lot more robots as compared to the Fremont one.” He continued, “We’re doing whatever we can. We’re not stopping. We’re just going at the fastest pace as we can.”

Musk followed with a gambling phrase for placing a bet before the result is known. “We’re definitely, as they say in Vegas, betting on the come,” he said. Neither executive gave a capacity number or an opening date for the Austin building.

Training data is the reason for building so many robots this early, since Tesla’s cars learn from a huge fleet on the road and Optimus has no fleet yet. “We need to make, I think, on the order of 10,000 or 20,000 bots and then have them do self-play,” Musk said earlier in the call. “We’re building out an Optimus Academy, where Optimus can practice doing a very wide range of tasks.”

Building hands that last is still the hardest part, according to Musk. “It is a hard problem, because humans have self-repair. Our body repairs itself, but robots don’t,” he said. “It is hard to make a hand that can handle lots of wear and tear,” while still being soft enough to pick up delicate objects.

Construction in Austin has been easy to follow from the air, and in September drone footage showed the steel frame of the dedicated Optimus building on the Giga Texas North Campus close to finished, as we covered in our story on the Optimus factory steel frame at Giga Texas.

Tesla’s Q3 Update lists two Optimus sites in its installed capacity table. California is marked “Early Ramp,” while Texas is marked “Construction,” which Tesla defines as factory and infrastructure buildout along with tool installation. Neither row includes a capacity figure. Back in January, Musk said the Fremont line was being set up for one million Optimus units a year.

Musk also made a long-range prediction on the call, saying Optimus robots will eventually build future Optimus robots. “I think at some point there will be more humanoid robots on Earth than there are humans,” he said.

Do you think Tesla needs a second Optimus factory this early?