On October 29, local time, Tesla CEO Elon Musk (Elon Musk) said through a video at the 8th Future Investment Plan Conference opened in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, that in the next 20 years, the number of humanoid robots in the world will exceed that of humans; Humanoid robots will propel Tesla into a $25 trillion company with a market cap.
Musk's prediction echoes the statement of SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son on the same day. Son also said at the same investment conference that by 2035, there will be super artificial intelligence (ASI) that is 10,000 times smarter than the human brain.
Musk predicts that by 2040, there will be at least 10 billion humanoid robots in use in the world, which could sell for $20,000 to $25,000.
Tesla is developing a humanoid robot called Optimus. Musk previously revealed that by 2025, Tesla will have thousands of humanoid robots put into work, and the official commercial mass production will start in 2026, and eventually become Tesla's "largest product ever".
Tesla is also developing a driverless taxi Cybercab and expects to eventually produce 2 million Cybercabs per year. "Robo-taxis will make Tesla a $5 trillion company." Musk said, "I think the Optimus Prime robot will make Tesla a $25 trillion company."
At Cybercab's launch earlier this month, Optimus Prime robots have been involved in a series of hospitality activities, including handing out goodie bags and drinks, but the robots still rely on remote assistance to operate their actions and do not have autonomous "brains".
Tesla isn't the only company pushing the boundaries of humanoid robots. More than a dozen companies are working on similar technologies, including FigureAI, Apptronik, Toyota Research Institute, and Boston Dynamics.
Speaking at the Future Investment Plan, Son stressed that a super AI that is 10,000 times smarter than the human brain will come out in 2035. But he argues that hundreds of billions of dollars will be needed to achieve super AI.
"Reaching this milestone requires a lot of investment." "Hundreds of billions of dollars of investment are needed to achieve AI," Son said. He also revealed that SoftBank is focusing on achieving super artificial intelligence, and plans to invest tens of billions of dollars to continue to promote the development of artificial intelligence in the future, aiming to put the company at the forefront of this technological leap.
Driven by the AI boom, the capital market is also flooding robot-related companies, driving the market capitalization of these companies to soar. Up to now, Tesla's market capitalization has exceeded $800 billion, and it has risen by nearly 20% in the past five trading days, and may become the next U.S. listed company to enter the "trillion dollar club".
Since the beginning of this year, SoftBank's stock price has risen by more than 40%; Nvidia's stock price rose by more than 185%. But Son argues that Nvidia's share price is still undervalued, given the expense required to achieve super AI.
Tech giants such as Tesla are buying large quantities of AI chips. Musk said earlier this year that Tesla would invest at least billions of dollars annually in AI infrastructure, including Nvidia hardware.
When talking about machine intelligence, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang said, "This will be the biggest industrial revolution we have ever witnessed." "We want to fundamentally achieve superhuman productivity, and these AI agents are helping employees in all walks of life to be more efficient and productive," he said at the Lenovo conference earlier this month. "