According to data firm FactSet, the total capitalization of the 500 largest public companies in the United States (S&P 500) is currently $45.5 trillion. Meanwhile, on June 13, at Tesla's annual shareholder meeting, CEO Elon Musk announced that the humanoid robot Optimus could increase the value of the electric car company by more than half of that figure.

Musk, who described himself as “pathologically optimistic” at the 2024 Tesla shareholder meeting, said Tesla was not only embarking on a “new chapter” in its life but was also about to write a “whole new book,” in which Optimus appeared to be the main character.

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CEO Elon Musk is optimistic about Tesla's future thanks to humanoid robot Optimus. Photo: Yonhap

Tesla first revealed its plans for a humanoid robot in 2021 at its AI Day event. In January, the electric carmaker showed off a laundry-folding Optimus robot in a demo video that was immediately criticized as a scam by robotics engineers, who said the robot was not autonomous but controlled by humans.

At the shareholder meeting, Musk didn’t reveal exactly what Optimus does now. But he predicted that robots will one day function like R2-D2 and C-3PO in Star Wars. They could cook or clean for humans, do factory work, or even teach your kids.

The billionaire believes Optimus could be the catalyst for Tesla's market capitalization to reach $25 trillion one day. In front of the crowd, Musk promised Tesla would move to "limited production" of Optimus by 2025 and test the humanoid robot in its own factories next year.

He predicts there will be “over 1,000 or a few thousand Optimus robots working at Tesla” by next year.

CNBC notes that all of this is far-fetched, even for someone as famous for his bold promises as Musk. Reaching a market cap of $25 trillion would make Tesla worth about eight times as much as Apple, the world’s most valuable company today with a market cap of more than $3 trillion. At the close of trading on June 13, Tesla was valued at $580 billion, ranking 10th in the S&P 500.

Musk also did not give a time frame for reaching a $25 trillion valuation. He added that self-driving cars could boost Tesla’s valuation to $5 trillion to $7 trillion.

Before making the ambitious comments at the annual meeting, shareholders voted to restore Musk’s $56 billion pay package, five months after a Delaware court ordered the company to revoke it. The crowd cheered as the preliminary results were announced, according to CNBC .

Taking the stage after reading the shareholder votes, Musk said: "I love you guys."

Tesla shares are down 27% so far in 2024, hit by falling sales and fierce competition in China. The company is making widespread layoffs. Musk urged investors to look past the current situation and into the future of autonomous vehicles, robots and AI.

Musk’s boldest claim on June 13 was that Tesla had leapfrogged Nvidia in chip development and was ahead of the curve when it comes to inference, or the process of training machine learning models to draw conclusions from new data. Nvidia’s stock has risen nearly ninefold since the end of 2022 on strong demand for its AI chips, helping to boost the company’s market cap to about $3.2 trillion.

One concern surrounding Musk now is that he is running Tesla alongside other businesses such as social network X, aerospace company SpaceX, construction and infrastructure company The Boring Company, and neurosurgery company Neuralink. In March 2023, he also launched a new startup called xAI and recently raised $6 billion in investment.

(According to CNBC)