Sep 30, 2026

Citi: Leading U.S. Humanoid Maker May Raise Weekly Output 10x in October as Tesla Supplier Audits Begin

Two supply-chain signals this month point to a sharp acceleration in humanoid robot production. On September 21, a Citi supply-chain survey reported that the leading U.S. humanoid robot maker — widely understood to be Tesla — may raise weekly output nearly tenfold to about 1,500 units in October 2026. Days earlier, Chinese media reported that Tesla's robotics team had started a new round of mass-production supplier audits across the Yangtze River Delta, covering suppliers of joint modules, actuators, and precision structural parts.

Citi's Production Forecast

According to Citi's supply-chain checks:

October 2026: weekly output may rise nearly 10x to roughly 1,500 units;
Early 2027: 2,000 to 2,500 units per week, reaching 8,000 per week by end of 2027;
Full-year 2027 production estimate holds at roughly 100,000 to 200,000 units;
The company may hold one or two product launch events in the coming months.

"We see positive implications for relevant humanoid robot component suppliers," Citi wrote in the report.

The Named Actuator and Joint Suppliers

Hengli Hydraulic — orders may expand from planetary roller screws into linear guides and electric drives; because the customer's assembly yield is still ramping, initial shipments could reach twice the actual demand; humanoid robot components are expected to account for about 1% of its 2026 revenue, rising to about 8% in 2027;
Shuanghuan Drive — already working with this U.S. customer in electric vehicles, it is positioned to supply high-torque reducers for waist or hip joints;
Leader Drive — its share with this U.S. customer is not yet clear, but management reports ample harmonic reducer orders from Chinese humanoid makers and U.S. players such as Figure AI and Apptronik.

Reported Supplier Audits in the Yangtze River Delta

According to Chinese media reports (not officially confirmed by Tesla): Tesla's robotics team arrived in Ningbo on September 16 and began a new round of mass-production audits on September 17. The visits covered Tuopu Group, Sanhua, and Joyson Electronics — suppliers of joint modules, actuators, and precision structural parts — and extended beyond Ningbo to Hangzhou, Shanghai, and other Yangtze River Delta supply-chain companies. Supply-chain sources said these companies had already secured Tesla humanoid robot orders before the audits; the audits assess production-line quality and compliance, and production follows soon after a pass. Tesla plans to roll out about 50,000 Optimus units in 2026 for deployment across its gigafactories.

Why It Matters for Actuator Buyers

Tesla's own written targets back up the capacity ambition: its Q1 2026 update shows the first-generation Optimus line (designed for 1 million units per year) replacing the Model S/X line at Fremont, while Gigafactory Texas prepares a second-generation line with a long-term target of 10 million units per year. The same document's footnotes concede that installed capacity is not the same as actual production — output depends on factors including parts supply. Yahoo Finance put it bluntly: "You can pour concrete and bolt down a line quickly. You can't conjure a million robots' worth of precision actuators from suppliers who have never made them at scale."

Actuators are the cost core of a humanoid: Hyundai Mobis has disclosed that actuators account for more than 60% of a humanoid's bill of materials, with 31 body actuators in each Atlas. The supplier list Citi named — harmonic reducers, high-torque reducers, planetary roller screws — is exactly the ramp-up list. The harmonic route remains the mainstream choice for humanoid upper bodies and lighter joints (see harmonic actuators built for humanoid robots), and batch consistency is the real threshold at volume production — the problem that automated robot joint production lines are built to solve.