Elon Musk doubles down on the Humanoid Robot Market Outlook
Elon Musk used his latest CNBC appearance to double down on a bold idea: humanoid robots will define Tesla’s future even more than cars. Speaking about the Optimus program, he repeated that demand for humanoid robots will be “insatiable” and predicted that Tesla could reach production of around one million units per year by 2030.
In the interview he framed Optimus not as a niche factory tool, but as a mass market product that eventually could be as common as a car or even a smartphone. Once costs fall to car level or below, Musk argued, the market stops being limited to industrial customers and opens to almost every household and business that relies on physical labor. That logic mirrors what Tesla has already communicated to investors this year: robotics and autonomous systems are expected to account for the majority of the company’s long term value.
Technically, Musk highlighted one breakthrough he sees in the humanoid robot market as critical. Today Optimus is trained with motion capture suits, where human trainers demonstrate how to walk, grasp and manipulate objects. The next step is to let the robot learn directly from video, in effect “watching” humans perform tasks and copying the sequence of actions. Beyond that, Musk described a future where robots improve through self play, placed in controlled environments with objects and puzzles and rewarded whenever they discover useful behaviors.
From a Humanoid.guide perspective, these claims sit near the top of the optimism spectrum, but they are directionally aligned with the scenarios we explore in the Humanoid Robot Market Report 2026. In our analysis, the industry shifts from pilot projects to a broad labor platform once three things converge: reliable and affordable actuators and hands, scalable AI for perception and manipulation, and high volume manufacturing capacity. Tesla’s roadmap touches all three, but our report also maps more than one pathway to that future, involving a diversified field of manufacturers and suppliers rather than a single winner.
If Tesla reaches even a fraction of the million unit ambition by the end of the decade, it would strongly support the report’s thesis that humanoids are on track to become a multi trillion dollar automation category rather than a robotics curiosity. If timelines slip, the demand Musk describes does not disappear; it shifts toward other vendors, integrators and component suppliers already tracked in our 2026 report.
For investors, suppliers and end users, the message is clear. Musk has turned humanoid robots into a board level topic. The Humanoid Robot Market Report 2026 is designed to translate that headline vision into numbers, timelines and competitive maps you can actually execute on.
Humanoid Guide Editors take: Humanoid Guide has been made aware that Tesla is working hard to finalize Optimus gen3 robot introducing a brand new set of hands for the robot, rumored to be industry leading dexterous, but also a quite complex designed. Reliability, safety and performance will be key metrics Optimus will be measured by once released to the public. We are looking forward to learn more about it and are following the development closelly.
