# Tesla Stock Falls After Elon Musk Frets Over the Difficulty of Building Robots

_Thursday, July 23, 2026 at 8:00 AM EDT · Robotics · Latest · Tier 2 — Notable_

![Tesla Stock Falls After Elon Musk Frets Over the Difficulty of Building Robots — Primary](https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2026/07/tesla-optimus-robot-2025-1200x675.jpg)

Tesla shares fell 14% on Thursday after the company reported negative free cash flow of $1.1 billion despite a 26% increase in revenue from a year earlier. CEO Elon Musk said on an earnings call Wednesday evening that the Optimus humanoid robot project faces substantial production scaling challenges.

Musk said Optimus will be the biggest product ever but is a very complex problem to solve. He emphasized that the production scaling challenge is very substantial and will be the hardest product to scale manufacturing that Tesla has ever made because everything on the robot is new. Musk contrasted the difficulty with sourcing parts for Tesla cars, which he said is much easier.

Musk also addressed competitor demonstrations, saying impressive videos of robots on the internet are preprogrammed or remote controlled. He said Optimus will be the first humanoid robot capable of doing generalized tasks. The stock is currently trading at $115 per share, down from a high of $201 per share shortly after the IPO.

## Sources

- [Gizmodo](https://gizmodo.com/tesla-stock-price-falls-elon-musk-optimus-2000789840)

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Publisher: Tech & Business (techandbusiness.org)