Did they do what they said?
Each claim a robot company made in public, with the date, the source and what happened next. Kept means on time. Slipped means late or re-dated. Broken means the date passed with nothing delivered.
- Tesla1 kept · 1 slipped · 1 broken · 3 open
Low-volume Optimus production for Tesla's own use in 2025, then, hopefully, high-volume production for other companies in 2026
OpenAs of late September 2026 Optimus units are used inside Tesla for testing, training and data collection; no sales to outside companies have been reported, and Musk now targets public sales by end of 2027. Source
Tesla would build several thousand Optimus robots in 2025 (internal plan: about 10,000), and they would be doing useful work by year end
BrokenOn the Q4 2025 call (2026-01-28) Musk said Optimus was 'still in the R&D phase' and 'not in usage in our factories in a material way.' No evidence that several thousand units were built or working in 2025. Source
Tesla will be selling Optimus humanoid robots to the public by the end of 2027
OpenSaid at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Musk said sales would wait until reliability, safety and range of functions were 'very high.' No public price or order page yet. Source
Tesla would unveil Optimus Gen 3, its first design meant for mass production, in Q1 2026
SlippedQ1 ended with no reveal; Musk said Optimus 3 needed 'finishing touches.' On 2026-04-22 he moved it to 'probably middle of this year.' As of 2026-09-25 the reveal still had not happened. Source
Start of production on the first Optimus production line before the end of 2026, heading to an eventual 1 million robots a year
OpenReports in September 2026 describe output rising to several hundred units a week on the converted Fremont line, but Gen 3 has not been shown publicly and the 1 million a year capacity is far off. Source
Optimus production would start on the former Model S/X line at Fremont in late July or August 2026, slowly at first
KeptElectrek (2026-09-25) reports Optimus output on the converted Model S/X line went from a few dozen a week in Q2 to several hundred a week in August. Most units stay inside Tesla for testing and data collection, and it is not clear which hardware generation is being built. Source
- 1X1 slipped · 2 open
NEO Gamma would go into 'a few hundred to a few thousand' homes for early-adopter testing by the end of 2025
Slipped1X instead opened $20,000 NEO preorders in October 2025, with first home deliveries set for 2026. No customer delivery had been verified by mid-2026. Source
First NEO orders ship to US consumer homes in 2026 ($20,000 Early Access with priority 2026 delivery, or $499/month subscription)
Open1X opened its Hayward factory on 2026-04-30 and says early units are going to internal testing first. We found no verified customer delivery as of late September 2026. 1X has also said some buyers will get their NEO in 2026 and some later. Source
1X aims to ship 50,000 robots in 2027, with its Hayward and San Carlos factories heading to about 110,000 units a year of capacity
OpenTarget set before any verified customer delivery. The April 2026 factory announcement gave capacity as 10,000 NEOs a year, with plans for 100,000+ by the end of 2027. Source
- Agility Robotics1 kept · 1 slipped · 1 open
Customers in the Agility Partner Program would get their first Digit robots in 2024
KeptDigit went into commercial work at a GXO facility on 2024-06-05, and GXO signed a multi-year robots-as-a-service agreement on 2024-06-27. Source
Digit would be generally available on the open market in 2025
SlippedDigit 4 stayed with a small set of named customers (GXO, Schaeffler, Amazon, Toyota Canada). On 2026-09-15 Agility unveiled Digit 5, with early access expected in the first half of 2027 and general availability by the end of 2027. Source
Digit 5, built to work safely near people without barriers, gets early access in the first half of 2027 and general availability by the end of 2027
OpenAgility says it had more than $300 million in multi-year Digit 5 orders as of May 2026, subject to contract milestones. Source
- Figure1 kept · 1 slipped · 1 open
Under a commercial agreement, Figure robots would be deployed in stages into live production at BMW's Spartanburg, South Carolina plant
KeptFigure said on 2025-11-19 that Figure 02 units ran 10-hour weekday shifts on an active BMW line for about six months, with 1,250+ hours of runtime and a role in building 30,000+ X3s. Figure 02 was then retired in favor of Figure 03. These numbers come from Figure. Source
Figure would start 'alpha testing' its humanoid (then Figure 02) in homes later in 2025, two years earlier than planned
SlippedWe found no public record of Figure robots being tested in outside homes in 2025. Figure's first published multi-home results came on 2026-09-17, when Helix 2.5 was tested in 30 rented Bay Area homes. Figure evaluated those tests itself. Source
In 2026, humanoid robots will do unsupervised, multi-day tasks in homes they have never seen before
OpenOn 2026-09-17 Figure reported that Helix 2.5 finished 56% of 420 household tasks in 30 unfamiliar rented homes. That was a single-task evaluation with a safety overseer, not a multi-day unsupervised run, and nobody outside Figure has replicated it. Source
- Boston Dynamics1 kept · 1 open
Production Atlas manufacturing starts immediately; 2026 units are fully committed, with fleets shipping to Hyundai's RMAC and Google DeepMind in the coming months
KeptPilot operations at RMAC outside Savannah began in June 2026 and have since moved to full operations. By September 2026 Atlas units there were learning to sequence parts. Those units are training, not doing production work. We did not find public confirmation of the DeepMind shipment. Source
Atlas starts parts-sequencing work at Hyundai's Georgia Metaplant (HMGMA) in 2028 and moves to component assembly by 2030, backed by a 30,000-robot-a-year factory
OpenAtlas is training at the RMAC center on the HMGMA site as of September 2026. Production-line deployment is still planned for 2028. Source
- Samsung1 slipped · 1 broken
Ballie would hit the market in the first half of 2025
SlippedOn 2025-04-09 Samsung gave a new date: available to consumers in the US and Korea 'this Summer' (2025). That date was missed too; see the next entry. Source
Ballie, with Google Gemini, would be available to consumers in the US and Korea in summer 2025
BrokenNo launch in 2025. In December 2025 Samsung said it was still refining the technology. At CES 2026 Ballie did not appear, and Samsung called it an 'active innovation platform' used internally, giving no release date. It has not been formally cancelled. Source
- Unitree1 kept · 1 open
Unitree would ship roughly 10,000 to 20,000 humanoid robots in 2026, up from about 5,500 in 2025
OpenUnitree listed on Shanghai's STAR Market in 2026. No full-year 2026 shipment count has been published yet. Source
The R1 humanoid would go on sale worldwide through AliExpress the following week, for North America, Europe, Japan and Singapore
KeptBy 2026-04-13 the R1 was listed on AliExpress through Unitree's Brand+ channel, from about $6,802 (EDU about $8,123). That is well above the roughly $4,370 domestic China price. Source
- Apptronik1 slipped
Field pilots in 2024, with Apollo commercially available by the end of 2025
SlippedIn February 2026 Apollo was still in commercial pilots (Mercedes-Benz, GXO, Jabil), with no public sale. Cardenas described the company as entering its 'commercial viability stage,' and volume orders are now pointed at 2027. Source
- K-Scale Labs1 broken
K-Bot open-source humanoid at $8,999 for the first 100 units, with $100 preorders and deliveries starting in 2025 (first July, later 'late 2025')
BrokenThe first Founder's Edition unit shipped in late September 2025. On 2025-11-04 founder Benjamin Bolte said the company had less than a month of runway, laid off most staff, cancelled the remaining preorders, refunded deposits and open-sourced its designs. Reports say about two units were delivered. Source
- Sanctuary AI1 open
Sanctuary would deliver its Phoenix humanoid to a Magna manufacturing facility for a pilot, with Magna taking an equity stake
OpenNo public results from a Phoenix pilot at Magna. On 2026-06-17, under a new CEO, Sanctuary said it would run its AI on existing industrial robots 'rather than waiting for humanoid hardware to reach mass commercialization.' Source
- XPeng1 open
Large-scale mass production of the new IRON humanoid by the end of 2026, before a global rollout in 2027
OpenOn 2026-09-07 XPeng said the first IRON walked off its new production line. It repeated the year-end mass-production target, with first deployments in its own stores and campuses and customer deliveries in 2027. Source
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