Tesla says its first production-quality Optimus robots are coming off a high-volume line. In its Q3 2026 update released Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026, Tesla said "Optimus production began in Fremont on our high-volume lines," adding that "the bots coming off this line are the first production-quality bots that we have manufactured." Tesla lists Optimus in Fremont as "Early Ramp" and an Optimus factory in Texas as under construction, with no unit numbers disclosed.
AI compute and the chip fab
- Tesla plans to reach 400 MW of "SI" (super intelligence) training compute by the end of 2026, for both vehicle and humanoid robot autonomy software. Its two Texas clusters are listed as Cortex 1 (more than 105 MW) and Cortex 2 (more than 120 MW).
- Tesla continued construction of its Austin Fab and plans to start commissioning equipment in 2027.
- Capital expenditures were $4.732 billion in the quarter, versus $2.248 billion a year earlier. CNBC said the drop in profit reflects a surge in spending on Optimus and other AI work.
What Musk said
On the call, Musk said Tesla is "making good progress" on the AI that controls Optimus, but there is "still quite a lot of work to do with regard to the AI and the robot for it to be truly useful for open-ended tasks," CNBC reported. He said he expects issues around electromechanical design, reliability, usage duration and AI to be "solved around the end of next year."
On volume, Musk said: "I would expect that it takes us probably at least a year — maybe a little longer — to get to that annualized rate [1 million units], to get to 20,000 units a week," Yahoo Finance reported. He added that Tesla may release an Optimus demo video in about a month.
Tesla also said Grok is available in Cybercab with access to Grok Bot and Connectors for hands-free inbox, calendar and task management. Related: Terafab test-chip timeline and Tesla's Q3 2026 results.
