We’ve had the technology to land robots on Mars for decades. Now we have something new: humanoid robots. They can perform many tasks designed for humans, potentially accelerating the timeline dramatically.

Mars is an extremely hostile environment for the human body, so robots make far more sense for the pioneering phase.

Phase 1: Deploy successive batches of 1,000+ humanoids to Mars. They build the foundations of a settlement: power, communications, construction materials, control centers, oxygen and water systems.

Phase 2: Make the settlement self-expanding. The robots begin manufacturing more robots locally, using Mars-based resources. Within 20 years, we could potentially have 1 million robots on Mars, coordinated by humans and a dedicated Mars AI—the central intelligence of the settlement.

Phase 3: Now it is finally safe for humans to travel to Mars for all kinds of purposes. But Mars is still operated by robots.

We are convinced that the first fleets of our M1 humanoid robots—what we call the “Open Columbus”—will begin building infrastructure for a settlement on Mars before 2035.