Tesla shareholders press for Optimus unit cost, first paying customer ahead of Q3 earnings call

Two of the top seven retail questions for Tesla's October 21 earnings call ask what each Optimus costs and when the robot starts generating revenue.

Tesla's retail shareholders want straight answers on Optimus economics when the company reports third-quarter results on Wednesday. Two of the seven highest-ranked questions on Tesla's shareholder Q&A page ask what each Optimus unit costs to build and what the first paying customer looks like — and when the humanoid robot will begin generating revenue.

The questions are collected and ranked on Say Technologies, where shareholders link a brokerage account to prove ownership and votes are weighted by the number of shares behind them. Submissions close Tuesday, October 20 at 4:00 PM ET; the earnings call starts Wednesday, October 21 at 2:30 PM PT, and management usually addresses a handful of the top-ranked questions.

Optimus sits alongside Cybercab expansion, unsupervised FSD timing, and Hardware 3 upgrades among investors' top concerns — a sign that the robot, not the quarter's vehicle numbers, is what many shareholders most want to hear about. The interest is not new: Musk said on the July earnings call that Optimus is "going to be the hardest product to scale manufacturing that we've ever made at Tesla," and that the early production ramp "will be quite flat and long."

Tesla has cleared the Model S and Model X lines out of its Fremont factory to make room for first-generation Optimus production, but it has not disclosed a price per robot or named an outside customer. With questions closing Tuesday afternoon, shareholders may finally get numbers — or at least a timeline — on Wednesday.