Elon Musk Says Tesla's Optimus Will Be An 'Infinite Money Glitch' That Ends Poverty, Performs Surgery, And Looks So Real 'You'll Need To Poke It'

Forget margins. Elon Musk wants to reinvent society with a robot that can walk, work, operate without sleep, and—according to him—perform surgery with precision so humanlike, you'll need to poke it just to make sure it's not a person in a suit.

Speaking on Tesla Inc.'s (NASDAQ:TSLA) Q3 2025 earnings call last month, Musk doubled down on his sky-high ambitions for Optimus, the company's humanoid robot project. The Tesla CEO called it "an infinite money glitch," predicting it would not only become a key revenue stream for the company—but possibly the most transformative product Tesla has ever built.

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"Optimus at scale is the infinite money glitch," Musk said. "If Optimus achieves five times the productivity of a person per year because it can operate 24/7… that's why I called it the infinite money glitch."

But for Musk, the upside isn't just financial. It's existential.

"With Optimus and self-driving, we can actually create a world where there is no poverty, where everyone has access to the finest medical care," he said. Then he dropped this: "Optimus will be an incredible surgeon. Imagine if everyone had access to an incredible surgeon."

Musk claimed on the call that Tesla could eventually build Optimus at a scale rivaling vehicle production—"millions per year"—despite the fact that a global supply chain for humanoid robots doesn't exist. "With a humanoid robot, there is no supply chain," he said. "Tesla has to be vertically integrated very deep into the supply chain because it just doesn't exist."

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That also means building the hardware in-house, especially the robot's hand and forearm—something Musk said is "more difficult than the rest of the robot combined." Mimicking the dexterity of a human hand, he explained, is a "crazy electromechanical challenge," but necessary if Optimus is going to handle real-world tasks.

Still, Musk's boldest claim wasn't about motors or actuators—it was how natural Optimus will seem.

"It won't even seem like a robot," he said. "It'll seem like a person in a robot suit… so real that you'll need to poke it to believe it's actually a robot."

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While critics might roll their eyes, Musk framed Optimus not as a sideshow to Tesla's vehicle business but as a centerpiece of its AI strategy. With the same real-world intelligence powering Tesla's full self-driving software, Optimus is being built on the company's full AI stack. That stack, he claims, is accelerating faster than ever thanks to a new in-house chip—AI5—designed for 40x performance over the previous generation.

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And yes, the robot army comment came up.

"My fundamental concern with regard to how much voting control I have at Tesla is, if I go ahead and build this enormous robot army, can I just be ousted at some point in the future?" Musk said. "I don't feel comfortable building that robot army unless I have a strong influence."

So what's next? Musk said a new version of Optimus—Optimus B3—will likely debut in Q1 2026. In the meantime, prototypes are already walking the halls of Tesla's engineering headquarters 24/7, able to guide guests to conference rooms upon request.

"I don't want to downplay the difficulty," Musk admitted. "But this is the game plan."

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