Musk denied reports that pre-orders for the Tesla Optimus robot would start in December
English translation from Unibot. Source published 2026-10-31.
Elon Musk seems to have changed his mind about pre-orders for the Optimus robot. In any case, he publicly denied this.
Robotics investor Modar Alaoui told The San Francisco Standard that Tesla could open reservations for Optimus in early December. Musk responded to this briefly on X on October 30: “No.” So the story with pre-orders is up in the air. The head of Tesla now puts deliveries to external companies at around the end of 2027.
What did the investor say?
Alaoui, an investor from ALM Ventures and organizer of The Humanoids Summit, assures that Tesla itself told him that bookings will start either at the conference on December 1-2 in San Mateo, or in the coming days after it. According to him, Tesla is a key partner of the summit and is going to show Optimus V3 there.
Most of the robots, he says, will be sold to companies, and a smaller part to private buyers. The first batch will most likely be in version V3. Previous models were mostly prototypes. The San Francisco Standard estimated the expected price to be above $20,000, but the amount of the reservation deposit has not yet been determined.
Production has begun, but engineering questions are still open
The pre-order news comes as Tesla ramps up production capacity for Optimus in Fremont. In January, Musk announced that he would discontinue the Model X and Model S and convert their parts of the factory to robots. On the October quarterly earnings call, he said that production of Optimus at the enterprise had already begun.
True, he immediately admitted: the robot has problems with AI, electromechanical design and battery life. “I think these issues will be resolved around the end of next year,” he said. “That’s when we should expect Optimus to be supplied to companies outside of Tesla.”
Between booking and delivery
It turns out that about a year will pass between the possible opening of the reservation and the actual transfer of robots to clients. For industrial buyers, the focus is currently on production itself rather than on a robot already available to order with a firm delivery date. Musk needs to produce from 10 to 20 thousand robots - data for training is collected on them while the machines perform tasks.
There are also plans for domestic use, and this adds complexity. At home, the robot will have to deal with different environments, with the movements of people and animals, and not repeat one operation at a fixed workplace. And yet, according to Musk on the October call, the Fremont plant should be producing 20,000 Optimus per week by the end of 2027.