Elon Musk is trying to fuse two of his biggest bets, humanoid robots and ultra cheap clean power, into a single industrial machine. His latest tease, a so called “Optimus Academy” to train factory robots, arrives just as Tesla and SpaceX chase a combined 100 gigawatts a year of solar manufacturing capacity in the United States. Together, the initiatives sketch an aggressive vision in which fleets of Optimus units help build the solar hardware that will, in turn, power their own artificial intelligence.
The stakes are enormous. If Musk can align a robot workforce, a 100 G scale solar buildout and new space based computing infrastructure, he will not just be tweaking Tesla’s product mix, he will be trying to redraw the map of energy and labor for the AI era. The question is how much of this is near term execution and how much remains aspirational marketing.
Inside Musk’s ‘Optimus Academy’ experiment
Musk’s “Optimus Academy” idea is his latest attempt to solve one of robotics’ hardest problems, how to teach general purpose machines to work safely and efficiently in messy real world factories. In a long conversation with podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, sitting alongside Stripe co founder John Collison on Thursday, he described a dedicated training environment where Optimus units could iterate on tasks, learn from each other and gradually close what he has elsewhere called the simulation to reality gap. The concept, framed as Optimus Academy, is meant to accelerate how quickly Tesla’s humanoid robots can move from lab demos to reliable line workers, rather than relying only on slow, hand tuned programming of each new job, according to Dwarkesh Patel.
In a separate clip shared from that discussion, Elon Musk explained that for @Tesla’s Optimus robot to learn more quickly, “What we’re going to need to do is build a lot of Optimus robots and have them work in the factory,” arguing that large numbers of units learning side by side is the fastest way to improve performance. That comment, captured in a post about Elon Musk, underlines how tightly Musk links Optimus Academy to Tesla’s own plants, not just as a product but as a core part of the company’s manufacturing system.
From cars to robots, Tesla’s pivot to Optimus
The Optimus Academy pitch lands as Tesla is already reorienting its business around humanoid robots. On January 27, STRATEGIC ANNOUNCEMENT DETAILS from Tesla, Inc spelled out that the company would end production of the Model S and Model X and shift focus to Optimus robots, a transformative move that signaled how seriously Musk now treats robotics as Tesla’s next growth engine. That On January decision formalized a shift that Musk had been hinting at for years, that Tesla’s long term value extends far beyond automotive manufacturing.
Operationally, Tesla is already preparing to build Optimus at scale. The company has said it is making preparations for the first production line, which it expects to commence “before the end of 2026,” and has described its latest prototype as close to production ready. Musk has previously predicted that Tesla could eventually deploy at least one million robots, a target that underscores why a structured training program like Optimus Academy could be critical. Those manufacturing ambitions were detailed in a recent update on how Tesla says its Optimus program is moving toward a dedicated line.
The 100 G solar mandate behind Musk’s AI push
Running millions of robots and ever larger AI models takes staggering amounts of electricity, which is where Musk’s solar ambitions come in. In his conversation about Optimus Academy, he also said SpaceX and Tesla Have a “100 G a year” mandate on solar energy generation, describing a future in which his companies help produce enough photovoltaic hardware to rival the output of large national grids. That target, framed in the context of Elon Musk Touts Optimus Academy To Train Robots, shows how tightly he links robotics and energy.
Earlier this year, Musk went further, saying that both Tesla and SpaceX now have a mandate to reach 100 gigawatts per year of solar production, a figure repeated as “100 g” in a detailed account of his AI and space plans. He has argued that the “solar opportunity is underestimated,” and that massively expanding solar power is essential to support AI infrastructure on Earth and in orbit. Those comments, which described how Musk revealed the 100 g mandate and how the world’s richest man sees solar as central to robotics and AI, frame the 100 G goal as a prerequisite for his broader technology roadmap.
Hiring, factories and the race to 100 G in the U.S.
Turning that mandate into reality will require a rapid buildout of factories and talent. Tesla executives have said the company is hiring to pursue Musk’s plan for 100 G of US solar manufacturing, a goal that far exceeds current domestic output and would require multiple new plants. They described how Companies like Tesla are ramping up recruitment across engineering and operations roles to support Musk’s expanded solar strategy, with the Goal of bringing large scale production online before the end of 2028, according to a briefing on Tesla hiring.
That hiring surge is not limited to Tesla. Nehal Malik has reported that Tesla and SpaceX are ramping up recruitment across multiple engineering disciplines as Elon Mus pushes toward the 100 G target, with new roles clustered around facilities in Austin and Seattle. The report on how Tesla and SpaceX launch a massive 100 G solar hiring surge makes clear that the solar buildout is being treated as a joint industrial project across Musk’s companies, not a side business for Tesla Energy alone.
Where the solar factories might land
Behind the hiring, Tesla is scouting locations for a new wave of solar cell plants. Takeaways by Bloomberg AI noted that Tesla is evaluating multiple sites across the United States, including New York, Arizona and Idaho, to begin manufacturing solar cells at a scale equivalent to 10 nuclear plants. That assessment of how Takeaways from Bloomberg AI describe the search shows how geographically broad the company’s options are, and how large the eventual capacity could be.
Separate reporting has said the renewed push reflects growing pressure from rising energy demand, particularly from artificial intelligence infrastructure, which is driving interest in domestic solar cell manufacturing on Earth and in orbit. Tesla is exploring U.S. sites to accelerate that domestic production, a move that would also help insulate its supply chain from policy uncertainty and tariffs. The analysis of how Tesla explores U.S. sites to accelerate domestic solar cell manufacturing ties that strategy directly to the energy needs of AI and space based systems.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
