Tesla Is Building a Giant Factory to Produce 10 Million Optimus Robots a Year

A humanoid robot factory. Tens of millions of square feet of industrial space. Billions of dollars in investment. All of this is now beginning to physically take shape in Austin, Texas. Tesla has begun construction of a facility dedicated to manufacturing its Optimus robot, and drone footage has revealed something many skeptics did not expect so soon: the first steel structure of the new building is already standing.

In the first quarter of this year, Tesla confirmed that the first-generation Optimus production lines are fully operational in Fremont, California. At the same time, however, it released an aerial image of a vast plot of land adjacent to the Gigafactory in Texas, which the company itself described as "site preparation for the Optimus factory."

Building permits then revealed the scale of this mega-factory. Tesla is seeking approval to add more than 5.2 million square feet of new industrial space to the northern campus of Giga Texas. Estimated construction costs are between $5 billion and $10 billion. Giga Texas sits on 2,500 acres and already has more than 10 million square feet of existing production facilities.

Drone observer Joe Tegtmeyer captured the moment that moved the project from the "preparatory work" category into the "construction underway" category. The footage clearly shows the first steel structure of the new building standing in the northern section of Giga Texas.

At the same time, the second phase of land reclamation is underway, which will allow the building to reach a length of more than 4,000 feet, nearly the same length as the main Giga Texas building. It will be 50 to 70 meters narrower. Massive foundation work is continuing at several locations simultaneously, with three different ground elevation levels, geotechnical piles, and concrete footings visible.

The new construction site address refers to Harold Green Road, a street that is still being built. The original Harold Green Road was renamed Tesla Road in 2022. The situation is now repeating itself: Tesla is simply building its own world.

Tesla has approached Optimus production in two waves. The first is in Fremont, California, where the company ended production of the Model S and X to make room for the first generation of the Optimus production line, with a capacity of one million robots per year. Production is scheduled to begin this July or August. However, the first units will not go to customers but directly to factories, where they will perform internal tasks and help collect data for refining processes.

During the Q1 earnings call, Elon Musk cautioned that the initial production rate would be "quite slow." Optimus has more than 10,000 unique parts, and this is an entirely new production line with no previous mass-production experience. He declined to provide any specific forecasts for 2026. Texas is the second wave. The Giga Texas facility will host the second generation of the production line, focused on high-volume manufacturing. Production is expected to begin in the summer of 2027. Once it reaches full capacity, it should produce 10 million robots annually, or roughly 27,000 units every day.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2026, Musk said that Tesla plans to sell Optimus to the public by the end of 2027 at a price between $20,000 and $30,000. He concluded his statement by saying: "I think every person on Earth will want to have one and will want to own one." Long-term global demand for general-purpose humanoid robots is estimated at more than 20 billion units, for both industrial and consumer use. He also wants to build Optimus V4 at high volume in Texas, as he confirmed on the social network X in January 2026.

Sources: teslarati.com and yeslak.com