One of the fastest growing technologies in human history is the extraordinary boom in humanoid robots.

In 2025 Tesla managed to produce over 4,000 of its Optimus robots, while the top five robot makers in China barely managed 1,000 each of their flagship models. More advanced droids like Atlas from Boston Dynamics were still undergoing development and AI training, and were far from mass production.

But once robots, built by robots, became a standard product of assembly lines, production scaled exponentially. Just like more humans produce more humans (by having babies), more bots can be put to work to make even more bots. Which brings down the cost and increases demand. Rinse and repeat.

“The key was reimagining the electric vehicle assembly line, and combining aspects of a smartphone production facility,” said Ricky Wang, Tesla’s head of Optimus production. “It’s a bit like making smart cars without wheels, or computers with arms and legs.”

While China’s robot factories are specialist facilities, Tesla’s Gigafactories produce robotaxis and droids side by side on AI-optimized, automated platforms. Since Optimus is expert at building more copies of itself, as well as Cybercabs, production has soared, with little human involvement. And the robots are helping build the new factories too.

Just like computers, robots get better every year. In the first humanoid half-marathon, the winning robot was almost three times slower than the human. Now robots easily beat the best long-distance athletes.

This year global humanoid production is expected to exceed 10 million, and five or ten times that number next year. It’s a veritable robot population explosion!