Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot just made its East Coast debut in New York City’s Times Square, where it handed out candy as part of an early Halloween celebration.
Outside NASDAQ, the Tesla Bot waved to onlookers, posed for photos, and distributed bagged treats while tethered to a power source. A CyberCab prototype was also on display. The spectacle coincided with Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm’s visit to NASDAQ MarketSite, where she was interviewed live on CNBC’s Squawk Box with Becky Quick.
During the segment, said she’s seen Optimus autonomously perform tasks in the lab like folding laundry, wiping tables, and shaking hands. It’s unclear how much of the robot’s behavior was autonomous during the Times Square demo. Business Insider reported that the robot dropped candy a few times but fixed its mistakes.
Tesla has been ramping up its flagship humanoid’s public engagements as it refines the design of its highly anticipated third-generation iteration. Optimus kicked off October 2025 with a viral Kung Fu demonstration followed by a red-carpet appearance at the premier of Tron: Ares. It demonstrated its social interaction and dexterous manipulation capabilities for more than a thousand attendees at the UP.Summit 2025 AI conference in Santa Clara.
Two days before the Times Square showcase, Optimus handed out candy to children as part of the EV maker’s Frunk or Treat Halloween event at its Austin Gigafactory.
During the manufacturer’s latest earnings call, Elon Musk said the Gen 3 Optimus launch has been pushed into early 2026 and that most of the delay is to perfect its highly dexterous end effectors, which have a reported 22 degrees of freedom (DoF) to capable of surgical tasks.
Tesla initially intended to build up to 10,000 humanoids by the end of 2025. It’s unclear when mass production will begin, but Musk said Tesla is preparing assembly lines. He has expressed confidence that Tesla could scale to 1 million units annually and that Optimus would eventually be the company’s biggest revenue generator by far.