Elon Musk claims Optimus robots could make Tesla a $25 trillion company — more than half the value of the S&P 500 today

The entire value of the S&P 500 currently stands at $45.5 trillion, according to FactSet. Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed on Thursday that his company's Optimus humanoid robots could eventually make the automaker worth more than half of that.

Musk, who characterized himself as "pathologically optimistic" at the 2024 annual shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas, said Tesla is embarking on not just a "new chapter" in its life, but is about to write an entirely "new book." Optimus appears to be one of the main characters.

Tesla first revealed its plans to work on humanoid robots in 2021 at an AI Day event, trotting out a dancer in a unitard that looked like a sleek, androgynous robot.

In January, Tesla showed off Optimus robots folding laundry in a demo video that was immediately criticized by robotics engineers for being deceptive. The robots were not autonomous, but were rather being operated with humans at the controls.

At the shareholder event on Thursday, Musk didn't divulge exactly what Optimus can do today. He suggested the robots some day will perform like R2-D2 and C-3PO in Star Wars. They could cook or clean for you, do factory work, or even teach your children, Musk suggested.

As for shareholder value, Musk said Optimus could be the catalyst for lifting Tesla's market cap to $25 trillion someday.

Speaking to a crowd consisting mostly of fawning fanboys in an auditorium at the Gigafactory, Musk promised Tesla would move into "limited production" of Optimus in 2025 and test out humanoid robots in its own factories next year.

The company, he predicted, will have "over 1,000, or a few thousand, Optimus robots working at Tesla" in 2025.

This is all far-out stuff even for Musk, who is notorious for making ambitious promises to