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The supposed future of Tesla has arrived — though it isn’t exactly inspiring. A new clip of the company’s “Optimus” humanoid robot, pitched as a cornerstone of Elon Musk’s long-term vision, shows the machine struggling to accomplish the simplest tasks.
The video surfaced last week on X, formerly Twitter, shared by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. The tech executive, who recently bragged about swapping out 4,000 staff for artificial intelligence under the brand “Agentforce,” used the same phrase to describe Musk’s robot.
“Elon’s Tesla Optimus is here,” Benioff wrote. “Dawn of the physical Agentforce revolution, tackling human work for $200K–$500K. Productivity game-changer! Congrats [Elon Musk], and thank you for always being so kind to me!”
Awkward exchange leaves robot stumped
The clip, also reposted on Bluesky, shows Benioff and Musk chatting with a gold-painted Optimus. The robot begins by saying it’s “just chilling.” Benioff then asks, “Hey Optimus, do you know where I can get a coke?”
Optimus hesitates, replying, “Sorry I don’t… have real-time info, but I can take you to the kitchen if you want to check for a coke there.”
Even that response seemed ambitious. For several seconds, the robot simply stares ahead with its blank faceplate. Musk can be heard off-camera remarking, “I think we need to give it a bit more… room.”
At last, Optimus clatters forward with stiff, shaky steps, shuffling down an aisle of what appears to be an empty office — supposedly toward a kitchen. Musk quickly adds, “It’ll be able to walk a lot faster.”
Grand claims, shaky reality
This is the same robot Musk recently declared would account for “80% of Tesla’s value” in the future. Benioff described it as a “productivity game-changer” priced between $200,000 and $500,000.
But if Optimus cannot fetch a drink, its usefulness as a half-million-dollar servant seems doubtful. Musk has nevertheless doubled down, predicting humanoid robots will number 10 billion worldwide by 2040, each costing at least $20,000.
So far, walking remains its biggest achievement — though even that isn’t particularly groundbreaking. “Walking without falling is both extremely hard to engineer and by far the easiest robot function,” Bluesky user El Gato Astronomico wrote. “This thing is maybe 11% as capable as Boston Dynamics’ Atlas from seven years ago, 3% of the way to being useful, and 0.05% to doing it affordably.”
Another commenter was blunter: “Imagine how bad it really is if this is the demo they decided to post.”
Even if Optimus had located a coke, the robot still lacks functional arms with joints — leaving it unable to pick up or deliver the drink.
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