After the market closed on October 21st, Eastern Time, Tesla released its financial report for the third quarter of 2026. The company's revenue for the third quarter was $28.05 billion, showing no growth year-over-year; total gross profit was $5.494 billion, which represents a 9% increase compared to the same period last year.

Tesla's operations are still under pressure. In the third quarter of this year, the company's net profit was $787 million, a year-on-year decrease of 43%; operating profit was $718 million, a year-on-year decrease of 56%. In terms of expenses, Tesla's operating costs amounted to $4.776 billion, a year-on-year increase of 39%, of which research and development costs were $2.761 billion.

From the perspective of revenue structure, the automotive business remains the main source of Tesla's income, with third-quarter revenue amounting to $20.56 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 3%; other businesses include revenue from energy generation and storage, services, and other revenues.

Optimus (Optimus Prime) robots are currently in a critical phase of transitioning from research and development to mass production. Tesla stated in its financial report: " Optimus production has begun on the high-volume production lines at our Fremont factory. The robots coming off these lines are among the first to meet mass-production quality standards. Although we will continue to iterate on hardware and manufacturing processes, we have already proven that Optimus the current manufacturing process is suitable for commercial products."

It is understood that the dedicated production line for humanoid robots at Tesla's Fremont factory in California is planned to have an annual production capacity of 1 million units. Meanwhile, Tesla is preparing a second production line for robots at its superfactory in Texas, which is designed for an annual production capacity of 10 million units in the long term.

During this earnings conference call, Tesla's CEO Elon Musk also responded to the specific progress of humanoid robots.

Elon Musk said, "Most of the production line capable of producing 1000,000 units per year has already been set up at the Fremont factory, but it will still take at least a year or even longer to reach that annual production capacity of 20,000 units per week." He noted that since the robots need to be safe, reliable, and have a long lifespan, some aspects of their design are still being refined, and there is still a lot of work to be done in AI to ensure that the robots are truly useful in open-ended tasks.

He expects that these issues will be resolved around the end of next year, which may also coincide with the time when Tesla begins delivering Optimus to companies other than Tesla.

Regarding the previous announcement that Optimus robots would be deployed in the “Optimus Academy” ( Optimus Academy ), Elon Musk also revealed more information. He mentioned that, unlike cars, Optimus does not have a large fleet of cars to collect training data. In order for Optimus to obtain training data, it is necessary to manufacture a large number of Optimus, and the Optimus Academy allows robots to practice performing a wide range of tasks.

According to Tesla executives attending the conference, the team is building a reinforcement learning loop. Optimus first completes initial basic training with human data, and then conducts a large number of self-play sessions in both simulation and the real world.

Musk also added that Tesla is preparing to release a video about Optimus, which will probably take about one to two months. He said, "In the video, what Optimus does is not pre-programmed; there will be a demonstration that will make you believe in 'what you see is what you get'." It is understood that since the prototype was unveiled, Tesla has rarely shown any operational tasks of the robot.

Optimus will also be equipped with Tesla AI5 chips around April next year. It is reported that the computing power of AI5 is approximately an order of magnitude higher than that of AI4, which will enhance the processing capabilities of the robots.

It is worth noting that during this teleconference, Tesla did not further discuss the potential possibility of merging with SpaceX. The day prior to that, Musk stated that SpaceX and Tesla had established a special committee. However, he also emphasized that a merger is not a foregone conclusion and still requires the support of shareholders.

After the market closed on October 21st, Eastern Time, both SpaceX and Tesla's stock prices fell, with Tesla's stock price dropping by more than 3%.