Market analyst Jo Bhakdi believes Tesla is possibly spending $2 billion on Optimus development annually during the prototype phase.
Bhakdi believes Optimus will take the lion’s share of the humanoid market due to the following reasons:
Bhakdi believes Optimus will take the lion’s share of the humanoid market due to the following reasons:
- Tesla has the funds available internally to spend $2 billion on Optimus research and development annually while other humanoid companies have to raise the money for R&D externally. And usually the amounts raised are much lower than what Tesla can spend.
- Tesla Inc is a conglomerate of Musk tech companies and can draw on the expertise across each sister company from xAI, SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink and X Corp. Unlike other humanoid robotics companies who specialise in only one area and usually outsource their AI and chipsets.
- Tesla has supply chains the others lack.
- Tesla’s workforce and engineering talent dwarfs others.
- Tesla has existing unrivalled geopolitical reach, selling its automotive products beyond the US in China, Europe, Middle East, Asia, Australia and has manufacturing bases globally. Tesla CEO Musk has cemented a friendship with US President Trump the others lack. Trump realises a big shift is coming with AGI, and is prioritising building the world’s AI infrastructure on US technology as a way to sure up US hegemony as we enter into an unpredictable future. Tesla is uniquely positioned to benefit from this.
- Tesla has the ability to generate the trillions of dollars needed to build out the immense AI infrastructure to develop Optimus’s AGI through sales of it’s existing products such as it’s Tesla automobiles, Robotaxi ride-share service, Powerwall etc. Tesla sister company xAI currently has the world’s largest supercomputer with Colossus. Tesla’s Cortex supercomputer came online late last year and Cortex 2.0 is scheduled to come online this year. Rival humanoid companies must rely on outsourcing their AI compute, which is much diminished by comparison.
- Another point not mentioned is Tesla has an existing customer base of over 7 million people that are potential Optimus owners. Other humanoid companies must begin development of brand recognition while Optimus is a mature and competing product.