Musk: 10 billion humanoid robots by 2040

The world will be home to at least 10 billion humanoid robots by 2040, says the technology billionaire Elon Musk.
The robots will be priced between $20,000 and $25,000, the CEO of Tesla and owner of the social media platform X said at the Future Investment Initiative conference, which began on Tuesday in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh.
Mr Musk’s businesses have been increasingly focusing on technologies such as artificial intelligence, autonomous driving and robots at a time of slowing demand for electric vehicles.
He had previously said he expected the company’s robot, called Optimus, to be ready for use in Tesla factories by the end of this year.
“Tesla will have genuinely useful humanoid robots in low production for Tesla internal use next year and, hopefully, high production for other companies in 2026,” he wrote on X in July.
Other firms, including Honda and Boston Dynamics, have also been developing their own humanoid robots.
Tesla has said it aims to build an “autonomous humanoid robot” to perform “unsafe, repetitive or boring tasks”.
Mr Musk has previously said Tesla aimed for the robots to be mass-produced and cost less than $20,000 each.
Also at the Riyadh conference, SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son reiterated his belief in the coming of artificial super intelligence (ASI), saying it would require hundreds of billions of dollars of investment to realise.
Artificial super intelligence will be 10,000 times smarter than a human brain and will exist by 2035, Son told an audience of global business, technology and finance leaders.
Son said he is saving up funds “so I can make the next big move”, but did not provide any details as to his investment plans.
He predicted that generative AI will require $900 trillion in cumulative capital expenditure in data centres and chips in the future, adding that he thought the chip maker Nvidia was undervalued on this basis.