Robots That Build Robots: The Factory Is Learning To Copy Itself

Tesla has started making Optimus on a line built for a million robots a year, and Musk says the robots will soon build the robots.

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On October 21, during Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call, Elon Musk described a factory floor that builds itself. In Fremont, California, the space previously used to manufacture the Model S and Model X now houses a production line for the Optimus humanoid robot, designed to produce one million robots a year.

Musk wants the line to reach a production rate of 20,000 robots a week in about a year.

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These numbers may seem exaggerated, raising questions about where so many robots would be deployed. However, they point to a growing trend: the increasing capabilities of robots on factory floors. The projected numbers may not be accurate, but the broader pattern is becoming clear.

Robots are becoming more capable because of advances in their underlying architecture, including rapidly evolving AI algorithms, AI chips and visual learning. They use neural networks trained in ways similar to modern AI models. One of the main architectures is the vision-language-action model, which uses visual inputs and language instructions to generate motor commands.

These models build on the same large vision-language models that power chatbots. As a result, robots can inherit general knowledge about objects, instructions and surroundings from training data collected across the internet.

Musk’s timelines have often invited scepticism, and he has acknowledged some of the limitations himself. In January, he admitted that no Optimus robots were performing useful work in Tesla’s factories, despite the company having claimed otherwise in 2024. In October, he conceded that Tesla was “building robots that do not have perfected hands" and that outside customers would receive Optimus only around the end of 2027.

The first 10,000 to 20,000 robots will be sent to what Musk calls an Optimus Academy, where they will practise tasks and generate training data,........

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