Morgan Stanley sees 8 million humanoids by 2040, Tesla powering the transformation

Musk expects its humanoid bot Optimus to go into limited production next year when Tesla planning to deploying a few thousand at its factory floors.

A major transformation in robotics in underway that could see eight million humanoids - robots shaped as humans - get created by 2040, Morgan Stanley said in recent note, adding that Tesla Inc uniquely poised to power and benefit from this shift.

This shift towards robotics is getting adopted a faster rate than even autonomous cars, Morgan Stanley said, with larger corpus of capital expected to be deployed for the development of humanoids. "We believe the humanoids opportunity is far bigger and faster adopting than autonomous cars and will see a greater quantum of capital behind it. Tesla is at the epicenter of the theme", Morgan Stanley said in its note.

Age of Humanoids?

Taking a base of $30 trillion labour market worldwide, the Morgan Stanley model projects a humanoid population of 8 million units by 2040 ($357 billion wage impact) and 63 million units by 2050 ($3 trillion wage impact). The staggering numbers will significantly impact wages globally, said Morgan Stanley.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk had in June said that he foresees a humanoid population eventually outnumbering humans by a two-to-one ratio, or a higher magnitude. "One-to-one for sure. So, which means like somewhere on the order of 10 billion humanoid robots. Maybe, maybe, maybe 20 billion or 30 billion," Musk had said at the latest annual meeting.

Tesla's Pivot to Bots

Musk expects its humanoid bot Optimus to go into limited production next year when Tesla planning to deploying a few thousand at its factory floor. Bots such as Tesla's Optimus are being prepared to handle repetitive tasks through large-scale deployment.

By 2026, Musk has predicted significant advancements in Optimus, with the software becoming fully customisable to meet specific customer needs.

Elon Musk has said that believes the automotive business will eventually dwarf as the clean energy, robotaxi and humanoid projects gather momentum. However, it is a long way from that reality, as the car business adds up to over 90% of Tesla’s revenue as of today.

That has not stopped CEO Musk from making lofty projections. Musk has hoped for Tesla to one day make around $1 trillion of profit annually from its humanoid project, though he has stopped short of committing a time frame for this. “It’s within the realm of possibility for Tesla to achieve a valuation 10-times that of the most valuable company today,” Musk had said during the annual meeting in June. Tesla's market capitalisation as of July 1 was around $670 billion, having tested a peak of $1.2 trillion in late 2021.

In April, news reports had said that Apple Inc too has decided to explore personal robotics, in pursuit of the next big idea.