i
News
All Research News
News · 2026-10-22

Tesla starts Optimus production as profit falls 43%

@neuronium_ai @neuronium_ai

Tesla has started building production-quality Optimus robots on a new line in California, while its third-quarter net income fell 43% year over year. The company says the line is ready for a commercial product, but calls output early-stage and expects a difficult ramp. Its ambition is to reach 20,000 robots a week by the end of 2027; for now, the announcement offers a target, not evidence of scale.

Cover: Tesla starts Optimus production as profit falls 43%

A new product, with a long way to go

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said production would grow slowly and “with some difficulty” because Optimus is a completely new product. The design still needs work: Musk said the robot must be safe, reliable and durable, rather than wearing out in a month.

Tesla also says much remains to be done on both the robot and its AI before Optimus can handle tasks in open-ended environments. That is a larger test than starting a production line. The company’s own account puts the product’s usefulness, not just its manufacturing rate, in question.

The business behind the robot

Tesla’s revenue was nearly flat, while spending rose sharply amid investment in robots, AI and autonomous driving. Net income was $787 million, down from $1.37 billion in the same period of 2025. Lower sales of regulatory credits also weighed on profitability.

Automotive sales remained at $20 billion, roughly level with a year earlier. Tesla delivered 486,532 vehicles, about 6,000 more than in the previous quarter but fewer than a year earlier.
Total revenue was $28.04 billion, compared with $28.09 billion in the third quarter of 2025 and $28.23 billion in the previous quarter.
Revenue from solar and energy storage fell 16% year over year to $2.8 billion. Tesla attributed the decline to customer refunds related to tariffs.
Services revenue, which includes Full Self-Driving subscriptions, rose 33% to $4.6 billion. The segment posted record gross profit of $734 million for the quarter.

The services gains did not cover the costs of Tesla’s AI and Optimus projects. The contrast matters: the robot is a long-term production bet being made while the company’s core vehicle revenue is not growing.

Revenue$28.04 billion
Net income$787 million

Autonomy slips again

Tesla executives spoke optimistically about Full Self-Driving on the earnings call, but the timeline for a version that does not require driver supervision moved out again. The current subscription product still requires drivers to watch the road and be ready to take control.

Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s vice president of AI software, said the company could begin adding customers’ cars to its robotaxi fleet around the second quarter of next year. Those vehicles would use Full Self-Driving (Supervised), updated to drive without supervision. On the April earnings call, Musk had said the unsupervised version would probably arrive in the fourth quarter of this year.

I think the useful comparison here is between Tesla’s precise robot-production target and its shifting autonomy schedule. A weekly output goal sounds measurable, but the company has yet to show that Optimus can perform useful work reliably. The same gap separates a factory line from a commercial robot: production is the easier promise to count.

Source

Daily AI news

Every day we pick what actually matters in AI and explain it plainly — no hype, no filler. Subscribe if you want to follow where the industry is going.

Only what matters — every day

Follow on X