- Criticized for spending too much time with President Trump and not enough running Tesla, Musk hosts an emergency all-hands meeting where he unveils his dream of building legions of Optimus robots that usher in a utopian age of ‘sustainable abundance’ in which mankind will want for nothing.
The image Elon Musk posted to X in the early hours of Thursday explained a lot of the criticism he’d been receiving. As Tesla faced its biggest crisis since the 2017 launch of the Model 3 nearly bankrupted the company, the serial entrepreneur decided to show off his new office as head of President Trump’s DOGE initiative.
The posting of the DOGE photo came at a time when Tesla customers were afraid to leave their car unattended because of increasing vandalism against them, and his personal baby, the Cybertruck, had just suffered its eighth formal recall in 15 months. Company analysts and investors had also begun to worry that he wasn’t paying attention to his EV company, with several telling him the ‘clock struck midnight’ and it was time to find a ‘suitable CEO’ to replace him at Tesla.
Musk appears to have gotten the message, because he returned to the company’s Austin headquarters in Texas to host an emergency all-hands meeting on Thursday, which he uploaded live to his social media platform.
Thanking his staff, Musk told everyone gathered and across Tesla the world over they are part of an elite club of handpicked people destined to make history: they will be the ones to forge a new utopian age in which humans will want for nothing.
Meeting served as important hand-holding for Tesla investors
“What I’m here to tell you is that the future is incredibly bright and exciting,” he said, “and we’re going to do things that no one I think has even dreamed of.”
Tesla superbull Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities breathed a sigh of relief that Musk had recognized the severity of the “dark brand crisis tornado” and engaged in what he called some “important hand holding” of investors to soothe their frayed nerves.
“Elon Musk took a major and much needed step forward by hosting a rare all-hands meeting for employees, which was quickly put together and broadcast live on X,” Ives wrote afterwards.
Ives had hiked his price target to $550 immediately after the Trump inauguration, just as the stock began its unprecedented descent to its current $230 price.
Ten ‘legions’ of Optimus robots scheduled for production
Musk touched on Tesla’s production milestone of over 7 million cars to date with another three million to come before the next year is out. He also promised the Model Y would once more be the best-selling car of any kind in 2025 for the third year running.
In addition, he said Tesla’s unique competitive edge stems from its ability to be the only company able to manufacture the world’s most sophisticated humanoid robot at scale. Tesla’s Optimus, he promised, would one day be the biggest product ever by far and launch mankind into a new era where our every heart’s desire would be fulfilled by millions of Musk’s automatons at our beck and call.
Musk said Tesla would usher in this utopian age—no one else—because only his company could manufacture humanoid robots by the “legion”, choosing the Roman empire’s term for an army for 5,000 soldiers.
“It’s kind of a cool unit,” he said, saying he hoped to already expand production of Optimus robots next year to 10 full legions.
Musk’s vision: ‘You can literally just have anything you want’
For the first time Musk publicly wove a narrative thread spanning the company’s stated mission of accelerating the transition to sustainable energy through its EVs and storage batteries to his new vision he described as “sustainable abundance”.
There will be no more scarcity of resources, Musk said. Mankind across the world will live as kings and serving them will be a Tesla Optimus in every household.
Powered by a Tesla battery and fed renewable energy from a Tesla solar roof, Optimus would autonomously produce goods and services “basically with no limit” while being butler to its owner’s every whim, educating his child and serving as a part-time buddy on the side.
“It sounds impossible, it sounds like surely such a thing cannot be the case. What I’m here to tell you is that will indeed be the case,” Musk explained. “The future we’re headed for is one where you can literally just have anything you want.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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