Musk Announces Tesla Optimus Operational By September

Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed that the company's first-ever humanoid robot Optimus may be functional by September this year, which is the reason why the electric vehicle maker moved the Tesla AI day to a later date.

Musk is again at the center of the news after a Tesla memo ending the work-from-home at the company and requiring employees to report to their respective offices and about possibly laying off 10% of the company's entire workforce, surfaced online. Despite this, the tech billionaire announced on Twitter that the highly anticipated AI Day would be delayed to September in anticipation of a "working" Optimus prototype.

"Tesla AI Day pushed to Sept. 30, as we may have an Optimus prototype working by then," Musk tweeted and later noted that the event would be "epic." It may be recalled that the humanoid robot was unveiled at the inaugural Tesla AI Day last August.

The Tesla CEO revealed that Optimus will be used to perform the repetitive and boring tasks that humans were paid for. Several months after the announcement, Musk said that Optimus can soon be utilized to help solve the U.S. labor shortage.

Musk described Tesla's humanoid robot as the "most important product development we're doing this year" at the company's earnings call January. He was so optimistic about Optimus that he said it "has the potential to be more significant than the vehicle business over time."

Tesla's Optimus is 5'8" in height and weighs 125 pounds and is designed to take over strenuous and dangerous human jobs. It will be first used in Tesla Gigafactories and will have the same AI system that runs the Tesla Autopilot and driver-assistance technology.

During the Wall Street Journal's CEO Council in December, Musk discussed what Optimus could do amid the declining population. "[The Tesla Bot] has the potential to be a generalized substitute for human labor over time. The foundation of the economy is labor. Capital equipment is essentially distilled labor … The fundamental constraint is labor," the Tesla CEO said.

"There are not enough people. I can't emphasize this enough. There are not enough people. I think one of the biggest risks for civilizations is the low birthrate and the rapidly declining birthrate," Musk said at that time.