Cathay Pacific Haitong: Optimus launches prototype trial production, physical AI is expected to accelerate breakthroughs

The Zhitong Finance App learned that Cathay Pacific Haitong released a research report saying that in the financial report for the third quarter of 2026, Tesla said that production of Optimus (Optimus) humanoid robots had begun, and the first batch of Optimus robots that met mass production standards officially went offline. Wang Xingxing of Yushu Technology determined that physical AI has now seen signs of being broken down, probably in the last 1-2 years or 2-3 years.

Cathay Pacific Haitong's main views are as follows:

The bank believes that the popularity of the humanoid robot industry continues to rise globally. The launch of mass production by Tesla Optimus marks a key breakthrough in the commercialization process of the industry, and that high-quality standards in domestic and overseas supply chains are expected to usher in an inflection point in performance.

Tesla Optimus is put into production, and Musk admits that weekly production of 20,000 units is difficult to achieve in the short term. On October 22, Tesla's financial report for the third quarter of 2026 revealed that the company has carried out Optimus humanoid robot production work on a mass production line at the Fremont plant. The first batch of robots that met mass production standards was officially launched, and the current production process already has a basis for commercial product manufacturing. Musk said that it will take about a year or more to achieve the weekly production capacity target of 20,000 units. Optimus is a disruptive new product, and there are many uncertainties in the production capacity climbing process, and there are still about 10,000 details to be adjusted and perfected. Currently, the project is still facing multiple practical problems such as robot technology research and rare earth magnet supply restrictions. Musk predicts that by the end of 2027, the design, reliability, and service life issues of the Optimus Prime robot can be basically solved before it is supplied to external markets.

Wang Xingxing of Yushu Technology said that physical AI has now seen signs of being broken down. On October 22, 2026 World Physical AI Conference and Yushu Partner Ecological Conference were held in Hangzhou. Wang Xingxing, chairman of Yushu Technology, explained in his keynote speech at the conference that since its release in May 2024, Unitree G1, a classic robot owned by Yushu Technology, has become the best-selling humanoid robot in the world, with a total production of about 10,000 to 20,000 units. Wang Xingxing judged that physical AI has now seen signs of being broken down, probably in the last 1-2 years or 2-3 years. Although it still takes 5-10 years for AI technology to fully penetrate people's daily lives from cutting-edge fields, breakthroughs in the field of physical AI are accelerating: the big model has solved the core problems of robot planning and communication, leaving only the bottleneck of physical interaction success rate and contact stability. It is expected that it will be possible to completely break through the boundary of capabilities in 2 years at the earliest and 10 years at the slow speed. Embodying intelligence to overcome the core challenge of ChatGPT is the alignment of the input and output of the AI model with the real robot.

Ministry of Industry and Information Technology: Using humanoid robots as small incisions to drive the development of a large-scale intelligent industry. On October 19, the Information Office of the State Council held a press conference. At the press conference, the director of the Science and Technology Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology introduced the development of China's physical intelligence industry. In the first half of 2026, China's humanoid robot products surpassed 400 models, with an output exceeding 40,000 units, and is expected to exceed 100,000 units throughout the year. In the next step, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will coordinate development and security, and use humanoid robots as small incisions to drive the development of large-scale intelligent industries, accelerate the implementation of related products and services, and inject new impetus into technological development in accordance with the idea of “innovation leadership, application guidance, and ecological collaboration”.

Risk warning: Industrial development process falls short of expectations; implementation of domestic policies falls short of expectations; risk of changes in technology routes.