Optimus's brain upgrade has a date. On Tesla's Q3 2026 earnings call on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026, Elon Musk said Tesla plans to integrate its AI5 chip into Optimus "in approximately April of next year," calling it "an order of magnitude more compute, AI 5 versus AI 4," according to the transcript published by Investing.com.
What else Tesla said about Optimus AI
- Training data: Musk said Tesla needs "on the order of 10,000 or 20,000 bots" doing self-play, and is building an "Optimus Academy" where robots practice a wide range of tasks. Ashok Elluswamy said Tesla is setting up a "huge reinforcement learning cycle" in simulation and the real world.
- Demo video: Musk said a video of Optimus "doing things that are not pre-programmed" could come in "maybe a month or 2."
- The hand: Optimus engineering lead Konstantinos said the hand is "one of the most challenging hardware areas," including bespoke gears still in development, while most of the rest of the electromechanical system "has converged."
- First customers: Musk said early uses will be industrial: "dangerous repetitive tasks" done 24/7. He said issues with design, reliability and AI should be "solved around the end of next year," CNBC reported.
- Cost: CFO Vaibhav Taneja said Optimus costs are "trending closer to where we would say our Cybercab costs would end up being," without giving a figure.
Related: Optimus production in Fremont and Tesla's 400 MW AI compute plan and Terafab's first test chip target.
