Venture capitalist Jason Calacanis has made a bold prediction that Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) Optimus will become a bigger product than Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone within the next decade.

Calacanis made the remarks on the This Week in Startups podcast after attending the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, where he also disclosed seeing a private Optimus demonstration not yet shown publicly.

“Optimus is going to be the greatest product ever made by humanity,” Calacanis said, adding that “it will sell and provide more value than the iPhone.”

The venture capitalist argued that Tesla’s hardware is roughly “one and a half generations” ahead of the robots he watched compete in Beijing, with its artificial intelligence capabilities even further ahead.

He predicted that Optimus would have won 35 of the competition’s 51 events had it participated, underscoring his belief in Tesla’s significant technological lead over rivals.

Reuters reported that more than 2,000 robots from 666 teams competed at this year’s Games, with events ranging from running and tennis to factory assembly and restaurant service tasks.

Despite the impressive scale of the competition, robots still struggled with practical challenges such as plugging in cables and recovering from operational mistakes, highlighting how much work remains across the industry.

Calacanis went considerably further than most analysts in his forecasts, stating: “I will guarantee you we will be sitting here in 10 years and there will be 1 billion Optimuses in the world. I didn’t say 1 million, I didn’t say 10 million, I didn’t say 100 million. I said 1 billion.”

Tesla has already begun converting its former Model S and Model X production area at its Fremont facility into an Optimus manufacturing line, a shift CEO Elon Musk confirmed earlier this year.

The company committed more than $20 billion to capital spending in 2026, with Tesla’s own website now listing Fremont as producing the Model 3, Model Y, and Optimus robots.

Musk has cautioned that Optimus will be Tesla’s “hardest product to scale manufacturing” because the company must effectively build an entirely new supply chain from the ground up.

The Fremont facility ultimately targets production of 1 million robots annually, with an even larger Texas operation planned for a later phase, though Musk has warned that early output will be “agonizingly slow.”

Not everyone shares Calacanis’ confidence, with investor Ross Gerber questioning Optimus’ near-term commercial prospects, and Unitree founder Wang Xingxing suggesting humanoids could still be years from their “ChatGPT moment.”