Overview

• A video posted by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff shows a gold Optimus interacting through xAI’s Grok voice assistant, pausing on a basic question and then walking slowly without completing an object retrieval.
• Elon Musk clarified on X that the robot in the clip is an interim “V2.5” prototype and confirmed Tesla has not publicly shown an Optimus V3 design.
• The updated unit displays external refinements including a smoother shell, tighter seams, a rounder silhouette, and mannequin-like placeholder hands, indicating incremental fit-and-finish progress.
• Musk continues to frame Optimus as central to Tesla’s future value and has projected thousands of robots in Tesla factories by the end of 2025 and about one million units per year around 2030.
• Deployment prospects face tangible challenges, including previous reliance on teleoperation in public demos and supply-chain constraints tied to Chinese rare-earth export licenses for the robot’s actuators.