Robot Riches: Musk Says Optimus and Cybercab Will Be the 'Vast Majority' of Tesla's Value

AUSTIN, Texas - Elon Musk has said plenty about the Cybercab since he first rolled it out in October 2024. Early on Sunday he spelled out just how much he thinks it matters. "Optimus and Cybercab will be the vast majority of Tesla's value," he wrote on X, naming the company's humanoid robot and its two-seat robotaxi in the same breath.

The post went up at 6:01 a.m. UK time on Sunday, just after midnight in Austin. Musk was replying to Teslaconomics, a Tesla investor account, which had argued that people judging the new Roadster only on its sales and margins were missing the bigger picture of what Tesla and SpaceX could build together. Within about an hour, Musk's reply had passed 21,000 views, close to 500 likes and more than 100 replies.

Musk then widened the frame. "The only things that will scale to incredible size (K2 and beyond) economically are super intelligence, robots, solar power and mass to space," he wrote. K2 refers to Type II on the Kardashev scale, a way of ranking a civilisation by how much energy it can harness, with Type II meaning the full output of its star. He closed with a line that ties the first two together: "And, of course, if you have the first two, the rest will follow."

For readers of this site, the striking part is where the Cybercab sits in that picture. Musk did not name the Model Y, Tesla's best seller, or the Cybertruck. He named a car with no driver's seat that is still in its first weeks of carrying the public, alongside a robot that walks.

The Cybercab already has real ground under it. Tesla runs public rides in the purpose-built cab in Austin, and the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles list now shows 349 Cybercabs registered in the state. This week Tesla also stretched its Austin robotaxi service so that rides now run until midnight, and riders were posting clips from after-midnight trips in the hours around Musk's post.

The case for the cab is easy to follow. A car that drives itself can keep working through the day and night, earning on every trip without paying a driver. A vehicle built only for that job, with two seats and no driving controls, is meant to cost less to build and less to run than a conventional car.

Tesla investor accounts on X shared the quote within minutes of the post. For a company that sells well over a million cars a year, Musk's message was that the bigger prize lies in the vehicles it never has to put a driver in.

Musk's sentence was short, but it leaves little doubt about his priorities. If he is right, the small gold cab now picking up riders on Austin streets is not a side project for Tesla. It is most of the story.