Elon Musk, already the world’s richest man, is now on the path to becoming its first trillionaire. Tesla’s shareholders recently approved a massive pay package for the CEO, including some $1 trillion in stock options. But the payout will happen only if certain targets are met—including Musk’s successful deployment of 1 million Optimus robots.
Named after a Transformers character, because of course it is, Optimus is a humanoid machine that’s supposed to be able to complete boring and dangerous work in place of humans. The robot was unveiled in 2021, when Tesla held an “AI Day” event detailing its future plans. Musk declared then that Tesla needs to be “much more than an electric-car company,” and to that end, it would combine its advancements in chips, autonomous driving, and batteries into this robot.
Optimus would be able to do factory work, sure, bu
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