How Elon Musk is ‘making manufacturing cool again’ and setting Tesla up to be a $40 trillion company
Elon Musk says ‘there is a path for Tesla to becoming the most valuable company in the world’ as it ramps up production on self-driving cars and humanoid robots.
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Elon Musk says “there is a path for Tesla to becoming the most valuable company in the world by far” as he announced autonomous vehicles will hit the road in June and his company will produce “several thousand” humanoid robots by the end of the year.
Tesla shares have more than doubled in the past 12 months, with the electric vehicle and home battery maker, chaired by Australian Robyn Denholm, now valued at $US1.22 trillion ($2 trillion).
While it’s worth about a third of the world’s most valuable company, Apple, Mr Musk told investors on Thursday morning “there is a path where Tesla is worth more than the next top five companies combined”. He believes this path can catapult Tesla to a $US25 trillion company.
The US is scrambling to cement its dominance in the artificial intelligence race after China shocked the world by launching DeepSeek — a generative AI model which almost matches America’s best and is much cheaper to train and run.
Mr Musk was speaking after Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said AI in robotics was a “multi-trillion dollar opportunity” and would spark a new industrial revolution.
Mr Musk said demand for Tesla’s humanoid robot “would not be a problem — even at a high price”, and plans to deliver the machines to companies “outside of Tesla” by the second half of next year.
“We made many critical investments in 2024 in manufacturing, AI and robotics that will bear immense fruit in the future, immense, in fact, to such a scale that it is difficult to comprehend,” Mr Musk said, adding 2026 will be “epic” and 2027 will be “ridiculous”.
“I see a path to Tesla being the most valuable company in the world by far. I think it’s an incredibly difficult path but it’s an achievable path.
“And that’s overwhelmingly due to autonomous vehicles and autonomous humanoid robots. The future is going to be incredibly different from the past. We live at this unbelievable inflection point in human history.”
Mr Musk — who has become one of Donald Trump’s closest advisers — said Tesla will launch an “unsupervised, full service” for autonomous in Austin in June in a move he described as “putting a toe in the water”.
Tesla is betting on a more favourable regulatory environment under the Trump administration. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been investigating Tesla’s “full self-driving system” after reports of crashes in fog and dusty conditions.
But, Mr Musk stressed maintaining safety for drivers, passengers and the general public was a top concern.
“Teslas will be in the wild, with no one in them, in June, in Austin. This is not some far off mythical situation. It’s literally five, six months away.
“We want to be cautious. It’s not that it doesn’t work beyond Austin — in fact, it does. We just want to put a toe in the water, make sure everything is OK, then put a few more toes in the water. Then put a foot in the water with safety of the general public and those in the car as a top priority.”
In regard to Tesla’s humanoid robot, Optimus, Mr Musk said “there’s a lot of uncertainty on the exact timing” but said it had produced a “sophisticated robotic hand” able to play a piano and thread a needle.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty on the exact timing, because it’s not like a train arriving at the station for Optimus, we are designing the train and the station, and in real time, while also building the tracks,” Mr Musk said.
“How can we predict this thing with absolute precision? It’s impossible. You know, the normal internal plan calls for roughly 10,000 Optimus robots to be built this year. Will we succeed in building 10,000 exactly by the end of December this year? Probably not. But will we succeed in making several thousand? Yes, I think we will. Will those several thousand Optimus robots be doing useful things by end of the year? Yes, I’m confident they will. They will do useful things.”
Tesla delivered mixed results for the fourth quarter. It reported adjusted profit of $US2.57bn, or 73 US cents per share, slightly below analysts’ expectations. Overall, Tesla’s net income fell 71 per cent from a year ago, in part because of a large one-time tax benefit in the prior corresponding period.
Overall revenue increased 2 per cent to $US25.7bn. Quarterly revenue recognised from sales of regulatory credits was $US692m, a nearly 60 per cent increase over the prior-year quarter.
Mr Musk said tech companies needed to make “manufacturing cool again” to realise his ambitious goals.
“People should move from, like, law and finance into manufacturing. We have too much talent in law and engineering, law and finance in America, and there should be more of that talent in manufacturing.”
Originally published as How Elon Musk is ‘making manufacturing cool again’ and setting Tesla up to be a $40 trillion company
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