OpenAI Restarts Robotics Business After Six Years, Short-term Bets on Assistive Robots
On June 1st, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced the company's entry into the physical robotics arena, launching a new "OpenAI Robotics" team. The strategy has short and long-term goals: developing robots to assist technical workers with infrastructure in the near term, and envisioning personal robots for everyone eventually. This marks a return to robotics for OpenAI, which had a team from 2016-2019 before disbanding it to focus on large language models like GPT, leading to ChatGPT. The revival stems from the rapid progress of an internal "Worldsim" research project, now led by Sora co-creator Aditya Ramesh, and a shift in strategy following the end of a partnership with humanoid robotics firm Figure AI in early 2025 due to technical disagreements. OpenAI's approach leverages its leading AI models and "world model" capabilities, aiming to build the "brain" first before the physical body. The move also serves to present a new growth narrative—embodied AI and expansion into the physical world—ahead of its planned 2026 IPO, potentially helping to address investor concerns over its significant ongoing losses.
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