The S&P 500 is currently worth $45.5 trillion, according to FactSet. But billionaire Elon Musk has claimed that Tesla could be worth $25 trillion thanks to the Optimus robot.
Musk described himself as pathologically optimistic during Tesla’s annual shareholders’ conference, asserting that Tesla was not only starting a new chapter in its life but was about to write a whole new book.
The electric car company revealed its plans for a humanoid robot in 2021, and in January it showed a video of Optimus folding laundry, which was criticized by robotics engineers for being misleading, according to them.
At the shareholders meeting, Musk didn’t say what exactly the robot could do, but he said it might one day be able to cook, clean or work in a factory.
He pledged that Tesla would move to limited production of Optimus in 2025, and test humanoid robots in its factories next year.
He confirmed that the company will have about a thousand or a little less Optimus robots in its factories in 2025.
Tesla’s $25 trillion valuation would make it eight times larger than Apple by today’s standards. The electric car company is currently worth $567 billion.
Musk did not specify a specific date for reaching that value, but he indicated that self-driving cars could push the company's value to a level ranging between $5 trillion and $7 trillion.
On the sidelines of the same meeting, Musk received Tesla investors' approval for his $56 billion pay package.
