Optimus

Optimus is Tesla’s humanoid robot. It is the most searched name in the category and the least available to a home buyer: there is no price, no reservation and no consumer delivery date. Everything below is what Tesla and Elon Musk have said publicly, with dates.

The latest: October 2026

Tesla’s third-quarter shareholder letter, released October 21, 2026, says Optimus production has started on a high-volume line at its Fremont, California factory and calls the robots “the first production-quality bots that we have manufactured.” Musk called it early production and said the ramp would be slow and “somewhat bumpy.” On the earnings call he said outside customers should start receiving Optimus around the end of 2027, beginning with dangerous, repetitive or round-the-clock industrial work. He named the hand as the main problem: fingers must be gentle with delicate objects and survive constant wear. The Fremont line is designed for about one million robots a year, and reaching roughly 20,000 a week will take at least a year, possibly longer, according to Electrek’s account of the call. Musk also promised a video “within a month or two” showing tasks that are not pre-programmed.

What Musk said about selling to the public

At Davos on January 22, 2026, Musk said: “By the end of next year, I think we’ll be selling humanoid robots to the public,” once Tesla is confident of very high reliability and safety. The October 2026 comments moved the first deliveries to outside companies, not households, to that same late-2027 window. The full timeline, including earlier targets that slipped, is in when will Tesla Optimus be for sale.

Price

Tesla has not announced a price. Around the October 2024 We, Robot event, Musk estimated the robot would eventually cost $20,000 to $30,000, a long-term figure tied to mass production, not a launch price. See the price guide for how that compares with other robots.

Specs and demos

Tesla’s planned figures, as summarized by Wikipedia, are 5 feet 8 inches and 125 pounds. Tesla has not published confirmed specs for the next-generation version, and its unveiling has slipped repeatedly: from Q1 2026 to “middle of this year,” then to “closer to production.” We could not confirm an unveil date. Tesla has been criticized for demos that relied on teleoperation, including the October 2024 event.

Track record

In June 2024 Musk said limited production would start in 2025 with possible sales to other companies in 2026. In January 2025 he said about 10,000 robots would be built that year. In January 2026 he admitted no Optimus was doing useful work in Tesla’s factories. Read every date as a goal, not a commitment.

Who it is for

Nobody can buy one yet. If you want a home humanoid you can reserve now, look at 1X NEO. If you are watching Optimus, the milestones to wait for are a published price, a reservation page and an independent report of a delivered unit.