Musk says Optimus and Cybercab will drive most of Tesla's value

By Splitfeed EditorialLast updated Oct 18, 2026, 16:00 UTC

On October 18, 2026, Elon Musk declared that Optimus and Cybercab would represent the vast majority of Tesla's future value, calling Optimus the company's most important product, above its electric vehicles. The remarks came ahead of a Tesla earnings event and were accompanied by a disclosure that three Optimus suppliers hold payment priority over Tesla itself in the supply chain, meaning those vendors are made whole before Tesla sees revenue from their arrangements.

The statements mark a concrete shift in how Tesla publicly frames its business. For years, electric vehicles were the core identity; now Musk is explicitly subordinating that line to a humanoid robot and a robotaxi service, neither of which has reached mass commercial deployment. Investors were already pressing Musk before the earnings call on questions about Cybercab availability and Full Self-Driving compatibility with older HW3 hardware, signaling that the gap between the vision Musk sells and the products customers can actually buy remains a live tension.

The Pro-AI camp offered little direct engagement with Musk's claims about Optimus or Cybercab. The one quoted reaction, from the account 0xeasy.bsky.social, noted enthusiasm for Tesla putting cold gas thrusters on a car, a technically separate detail that suggests mild interest in Tesla's engineering ambition without endorsing the broader valuation argument. The Anti-AI camp was louder and more focused on Musk himself than on the products. Volberg.bsky.social drew a distinction between demonstrating an existing engineering principle in a prototype and inventing underlying technology, questioning how much genuine innovation is present. Zerogeewhiz.bsky.social argued Tesla has lost its lead as an EV innovator over the past decade regardless of Musk's presence. Other accounts framed the claims as deliberate hype aimed at investors or attacked Musk's political conduct. The Middle Ground camp engaged most directly with the product economics. Hades69099.bsky.social framed the challenge plainly: Optimus needs to hit a capability threshold and a price point simultaneously, and doing both at once will take time. Srkdan.bsky.social suggested that some Optimus features are likelier to appear in standard Tesla vehicles before a standalone robot ships widely.

The Tesla earnings event itself is the nearest checkpoint. Production figures for Optimus, any confirmed Cybercab availability date, and guidance on HW3 FSD rollout would each sharpen the debate considerably, giving both skeptics and supporters concrete numbers to argue over rather than executive statements alone.