Drone Video Shows Optimus Factory Steel Frame Nearing Completion

New drone footage reveals that the steel frame for Tesla’s dedicated Optimus factory at Gigafactory Texas is nearing completion, marking a significant milestone in the facility’s construction timeline.

What Happened

According to drone video posted by site observer Joe Tegtmeyer on Thursday afternoon, structural steel assembly is now approximately five column grids away from reaching the building’s north perimeter beam. This places the primary skeleton in its final stretch roughly six months after Tesla broke ground on the North Campus site in late March. The footage also shows concrete being poured on three upper floors while crews continue laying rebar and pouring grade beam footings at ground level. This parallel workflow, where steel rises at one end while concrete sets at the other, mirrors the scheduling approach Tesla used for the original Giga Texas building to accelerate progress.

Why It Matters

The rapid progress on the Optimus factory is critical for Tesla’s goal of starting production in the summer of 2027. The facility is part of a more than 5.2 million square foot expansion on Giga Texas’s North Campus, designed to eventually run nearly the length of the existing vehicle factory. Elon Musk has stated a long-term output target of 10 million Optimus units per year at full capacity, a volume that would dwarf the one million unit pilot line currently being established at Tesla’s Fremont, California factory. By housing both robot assembly and the joint Tesla-SpaceX Terafab chip fabrication plant on the same campus, Tesla aims to reduce supply chain lead times and shipping delays between silicon production and final assembly.

The Bottom Line

With steel assembly nearing its final stages and concrete work progressing in parallel, the Giga Texas Optimus factory is visibly advancing toward its 2027 production target, while Fremont continues to generate real-world data with its smaller pilot line.