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A model of Tesla’s planned humanoid robot, Optimus, is displayed at the Seoul Mobility Show in Goyang, South Korea, Thursday, March 30, 2023. The motor show runs through April 9. Photo by Sungjun Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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The entire S&P 500 is now worth $45.5 trillion, according to FactSet. Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk claimed on Thursday that his company’s humanoid robot, Optimus, could eventually make the company worth more than half what it is now.
Speaking at the company’s 2024 annual shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas, a self-described “pathologically optimistic” Musk said Tesla wasn’t just embarking on a “new chapter” but was writing an entirely “new book,” with Optimus appearing to be one of its main characters.
Tesla first revealed its plans for developing a humanoid robot at its 2021 AI Day event, showcasing a sleek, androgynous, robotic dancer in a unitard.
In January, Tesla showed off a demo video of its laundry-folding Optimus robot, which was quickly criticized by robotics engineers as misleading: the robot wasn’t autonomous, but rather operated under human control.
During Thursday’s shareholder event, Musk didn’t offer specifics about what Optimus can currently do. He suggested that in the future, Optimus will work more like R2-D2 or C-3PO from Star Wars. Musk suggested that Optimus could cook, clean, work in a factory and even teach children.
In terms of shareholder value, Musk said Optimus could one day be the catalyst for Tesla’s market cap reaching $25 trillion.
Speaking to a crowd of mostly enthusiastic fans in the Gigafactory’s auditorium, Musk promised that Tesla will move into “limited production” of Optimus in 2025 and will be testing the humanoid robot in its factories next year.
He predicted that by 2025, “Tesla will have more than 1,000 Optimus robots, possibly several thousand.”
This is all far-fetched even for Musk, who is famous for making ambitious promises to investors and customers that he never delivers, from developing software that can turn existing Teslas into rechargeable, self-driving cars to EV battery swapping stations.
A market cap of $25 trillion would mean Tesla’s value would increase roughly eightfold. apple Currently, the iPhone maker is the world’s largest company by market capitalization. Microsoft.
As of Thursday’s closing price, Tesla’s market capitalization was about $580 billion, making it the 10th largest company in the S&P 500 index.
Musk didn’t say how long it would take to reach $25 trillion, but said self-driving cars could give the company a market cap of between $5 trillion and $7 trillion.
Musk said he agreed with the figure put forward by longtime Tesla bull Cathie Wood, CEO of ARK Invest, which this week set a price target of $2,600 for Tesla shares by 2029, betting on the commercial robotaxi business, which Tesla has yet to enter.
Wood’s target price equates to a Tesla market capitalization of more than $8 trillion.
Musk’s remarks at the annual shareholder meeting came after shareholders voted to reinstate the CEO’s $56 billion compensation plan, five months after a Delaware court ordered the company to scrap it. The audience cheered as the proposal was read out and the preliminary results were announced.
Taking the stage after the results of the shareholder vote were read out, Musk said, “First off, I want to say wow! I love you all.”
Tesla shares have fallen 27% this year as sales have fallen in part due to an aging lineup of electric cars and growing competition in China. The company has also made significant cuts to its workforce. Mr. Musk has urged investors not to focus on the business’s current state, but to focus on a future of self-driving cars, robots and artificial intelligence.
One of Musk’s boldest claims on Thursday was that Tesla has made so much progress in silicon that NVIDIA This is true when it comes to inference, the process a trained machine learning model uses to draw conclusions from new data.
Nvidia’s shares have surged nearly ninefold since the end of 2022, driven by demand for the company’s AI chips. The company’s market capitalization is now about $3.2 trillion.
One concern surrounding Musk is his focus on Tesla despite all his other work: He owns and runs social media company X, was CEO of SpaceX, founded The Boring Company and Neuralink, and launched another startup, xAI, in March of last year, which recently raised $6 billion in venture funding.
During the meeting, Musk was asked by a shareholder how important he personally is to Tesla’s future.
“I’m here to help drive that future,” he said, highlighting his role in innovation.
He said other companies, including tech startups, are eyeing the humanoid robot market, including Boston Dynamics, Agility, Neura and Aptronic.
“What really matters is whether we can get it done much faster, several years faster than anyone else, and build a better product,” Musk said.
clock: Tesla shareholders approve Musk’s $56 billion compensation package