A harsh statement shocks the entire industrial chain

In a Tesla conference room in late June 2026, Musk dropped a bombshell on the Optimus team.

During the executive review meeting, he had just approved the latest version of the third-generation Optimus (Optimus Prime)—meaning that after more than three years of development and repeated delays, Optimus Gen 3 was finally ready to leave the lab and enter mass production.

But what truly sent shivers down the spines of the entire robotics supply chain was not the news of its "finalization," but the "military order" Musk immediately issued:

He demanded the team meet production targets by the end of the year—or he would fire the entire Optimus procurement team.

According to multiple Tesla supply chain sources, Tesla swiftly issued detailed component procurement guidelines after the meeting, with clear weekly production thresholds:

By September 2026, production must reach 1,000 units per week; by year-end, it must further surge to 2,000–2,500 units per week.

This translates to Tesla's suppliers needing the capacity to supply 100,000 Optimus components annually by year-end. Concrete orders for hundreds of units in August have already landed on suppliers' desks.

One supply chain insider put it vividly:

"This inspires more confidence in the supply chain, capital markets, and even the entire robotics industry than any order or forecast guidance."

Almost simultaneously, another signal was caught by capital markets—in late June, Musk posted a photo with workers at the under-construction Tesla Optimus factory in Fremont, California. Suppliers immediately read between the lines:

"Though the production line isn't finished yet, this photo tells us Elon has finally wrapped up SpaceX's IPO and is coming back."

The man who once claimed "humanoid robots will be the largest industry in human history" is back—and this time, he's in a hurry.

Why is a man with the world's strongest computing power, deepest pockets, and wildest imagination so desperate for mass production of a single robot?

The answer lies in Optimus's string of broken promises over the past few years.

Why the urgency? A report card filled with delays

Musk's urgency is forced by reality. Optimus has missed nearly every key deadline he previously promised.

Since its debut at the 2022 AI Day, Optimus has lived under a constantly revised roadmap. Musk once promised to produce around 10,000 robots by 2025—

but by January 2026, he had to admit that no Optimus was performing "useful work" in Tesla's factories. Annual production targets were slashed from 5,000 to 2,000 units.

Even more embarrassing: from late last year to this year, Tesla temporarily halted component procurement and slowed production, purchasing parts for only about 50 robots per month.

The team's energy was almost entirely spent on "re-optimizing designs." In just the past six months, Gen 3 has iterated through Alpha, Beta, and C versions—largely to "deliver a stunning live demonstration" rather than truly achieve the "human-like" intelligence and agility Musk envisions.

What's holding it back? A pile of cold engineering challenges.

The most critical issue is the "hand."

Musk repeatedly stresses that "the robot's hand is extremely difficult"—and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

According to supply chain sources, "the robot's hand lead screws took nearly four years of revisions to finalize, and the motor wiring had to be redone entirely."

Early versions of the dexterous hand using full tendon-driven schemes lacked grip strength and had fragile materials. Switching to a "tendon + linkage" hybrid design introduced new problems: complex structures and soaring costs. During trial production, per-unit costs once hit $40,000–$50,000—far exceeding the $20,000 mass-production target.

Then there's the "lifespan" hurdle.

The planetary roller screws—core components of Optimus—require precision within ±6 microns, but their joint lifespan is only about one year, far short of the five-plus years needed for industrial applications.

Precision devices like reducers typically last only 8,000 hours. At an eight-hour workday, they'd need replacement in under three years—and unlike humans, robots can't self-repair. "If they break, you just replace them."

The entire Optimus production line involves roughly 10,000 unique components, none of which have undergone mass production. Musk himself admits that overall progress will ultimately be held back by the "unluckiest, slowest" component among those 10,000.

If technical quagmires are "internal troubles," then "external threats" are even more unsettling for Musk—

When it comes to mass production, Tesla has already fallen behind Chinese companies.

Domestic leaders like Unitree and Zhiyuan have already achieved bulk deliveries of complete robots, generating stable revenue through real-world factory tasks like handling and assembly. In contrast, Tesla has no clear plans to sell Optimus externally; its robots are currently deployed only in Tesla's own factories for closed-loop processes like sealing, assembly, and handling.

This means every Optimus built is pure capital expenditure, unable to generate revenue—unlike some Chinese companies that have achieved a "production-delivery-profit" business closed loop (closed loop).

A stark contrast: While Tesla spent four years perfecting lead screws, "some domestic companies did it in two revisions."

With technical delays internally and rivals surging externally, Optimus has failed to deliver on Musk's grand narrative of "reshaping the global economy." This is the true source of anxiety behind his year-end "military order."

So the question remains: Why is Musk pushing so relentlessly for mass production of a product that hasn't even perfected its "hands"?

Because on his chessboard, Optimus is no longer just a product—it's Tesla's entire future.

Musk's endgame: Betting 80% of Tesla on robots

To understand Musk's madness, one must grasp the vision he's painted for Optimus—a vision so vast it knows no bounds.

In multiple public statements in 2025, Musk repeatedly emphasized: Roughly 80% of Tesla's future value will come from Optimus robots.

This isn't just marketing fluff. He laid out a staggering projection: Global demand for humanoid robots could reach "20–50 billion units." If Tesla achieves annual production of 1 billion units at a cost of around $3,000 each, this business alone could generate annual revenue of $30 trillion.

He even predicts that if Optimus and Robotaxi both succeed, Tesla's valuation could soar to $25–30 trillion—20 to 30 times its current market cap.

In Musk's vision, Optimus is the "next-generation smart terminal" after personal computers and smartphones. It will redefine human-machine interaction and ultimately reshape the global labor structure.

A Morgan Stanley report backs this narrative: By 2050, the global humanoid robot market could reach $5 trillion.

And Musk isn't betting on imagination alone. He holds several unique trump cards—

The first is the AI brain.

Optimus's core competitiveness stems from Tesla's deep autonomous driving (autonomous driving) expertise. It directly reuses Tesla's AI computers (current AI4, upgrading to AI5) and battery technology, "demoting" the FSD chip's computing power and Autopilot's vision system for robotic applications.

This "technology reuse" drastically cuts R&D costs while building a unique ecological barrier. To support AI training behind the scenes, Musk's xAI is even pursuing a $12 billion debt financing round.

The second is mass-production capability.

This is Tesla's moat against all robotics startups. Its scaled manufacturing experience and supply chain management in electric vehicles are the key to pushing Optimus from "prototypes" to "millions of units."

Musk is betting on replicating the Model 3's success: First, scale up production in industrial scenarios to reduce unit costs. Once production hits millions, unit prices could drop below $20,000—just as the Model 3 reshaped the EV market, triggering mass adoption of humanoid robots.

The third is relentless investment.

In 2026, Tesla's strategic focus shifted almost entirely to robotics. It announced the discontinuation of flagship models Model S and Model X, dismantling the entire Fremont factory production line to rebuild it for annual robot production of 1 million units. Meanwhile, a second-generation line is being planned at the Texas Gigafactory, with a long-term target of 10 million units annually.

Musk vowed to dismantle an old line, install a new one, and start production within four months. "I don't think any other company on Earth has done this before," he claimed.

To fund this, Tesla's 2026 capital expenditures will exceed $25 billion, with heavy investments in computing clusters, self-developed chips, and Optimus factories.

Halting flagship production, dismantling production lines, spending $25 billion—this is a classic Musk-style gamble: Betting everything on an unproven future.

What's at stake with the 100,000-unit threshold?

Returning to the year-end "military order." Once we understand the context, it becomes clear: Musk isn't just chasing the number "100,000 robots."

The first layer is forcing supply chain standardization.

By imposing a harsh 100,000-unit production threshold to screen suppliers, Tesla disqualifies vendors that fail to meet standards. The deeper meaning of this tactic is to drive standardization of core components like lead screws, actuators, and tactile sensors.

Previously, humanoid robot components varied widely in specifications, with customized development driving up industry-wide costs. Tesla's large-scale centralized procurement aims to establish a universal hardware standard for humanoid robots, reducing costs across the sector long-term. This is the true dividend of Optimus's mass-production plans for the industry.

Suppliers are also betting real money on this future. Manufacturers working with Tesla for nearly four years are willing to invest heavily in expanding production lines—essentially gambling that Musk can indeed establish this standard.

Zhejiang-based supplier Xinjian Transmission even invested 2.8 billion yuan (equivalent to seven years of its revenue) in a new project for annual production of 1 million robot and automotive components—despite generating just 31.11 million yuan in robot-related revenue in 2025.

The second layer—and what Musk is truly betting on—is confidence.

As a supply chain insider soberly reminded: "It's not that Tesla plans to build this many robots. It's that Tesla plans to buy this many components—which might just end up in warehouses." Design capacity doesn't equal actual output. The 100,000-unit component order doesn't necessarily mean 100,000 functional robots.

Because three long-term challenges facing Optimus won't disappear with the completion of production lines:

Insufficient lifespan of precision components, unmet expectations for general AI interaction capabilities, and a completely blank external commercialization system. Especially the last point—without stable usage scenarios, every robot built is a cost, not revenue. The more aggressive mass production becomes, the greater the risk of "warehouse pileups."

Thus, Musk's threat to "fire the entire team" is less a guaranteed KPI than a high-profile declaration of confidence: A message to suppliers, capital markets, and all wait and see (onlookers) that Tesla is serious—Optimus is going all-in.

No one can predict the outcome of this gamble.

Optimistically, Tesla holds dual advantages in vehicle supply chains and self-developed AI. Once mass production succeeds, it will set the hardware performance ceiling for humanoid robots. Meanwhile, domestic players like Unitree and Zhiyuan have already pioneered commercial closed loop (closed loops), providing replicable deployment models.

These parallel paths—Tesla's technical leadership and Chinese firms' commercial pragmatism—could collectively propel the industry beyond "showcase prototypes."

But cautiously, this remains a classic "tech-hot, business-cold" gamble. As of Q3 2025, Optimus trial production remained below 1,000 units; over 80% of embodied AI companies haven't achieved scaled revenue. Amid the hype, bubbles are inflating.

Regardless, Musk has pushed his chips to the center of the table. He halted his most expensive flagship cars, dismantled his famous production lines, and issued his harshest military order—sealing off all apparent retreats.

At a fan event's conclusion, he once received a brick and a message: "This brick will spiritually fly because you make the impossible reality."

Now, the year-end threshold of 2,500 units per week is another brick Musk has laid for Optimus.

Will it "fly" as he claims, reshaping a multi-trillion-dollar industry? Or will it collide with the "unluckiest, slowest" component and crash back to earth?

The answer lies in the roar of production lines in the final months of 2026.

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