OpenAI disbands robotics team, bets general models can run robots
What's the deal? OpenAI has disbanded its stand-alone robotics team and reassigned staff, the company confirmed on November 13. Robotics researchers move into the main research group under chief research officer Mark Chen, while applied robotics and hardware staff join the Applied organization led by president Greg Brockman.
Why now? OpenAI said its researchers began the year expecting robotics progress to build on video models such as Sora. Since then, the company said, its general-purpose frontier models — including GPT-6 Astra — have shown they can be applied directly to robots.
What's the endgame? OpenAI said the reorganization is meant to speed up robotics work, not end it, and that the field remains core to its long-term plans. It is developing its own humanoid robot, with chief executive Sam Altman targeting a first public demonstration in 2027.
A spokesperson described the move as a sign of commitment rather than a retreat. The company published no statement of its own and did not say how many people were affected.
The change was recent enough that OpenAI had registered booth #208 at CoRL, a leading academic robotics conference in Austin. When FortuneDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → visited, the booth sat empty with no OpenAI logo in sight.
What could go wrong? The capability claim rests largely on a simulated test, not physical robots. An Nvidia study ran GPT-6 Astra as a robot controller on a simulated pick-and-place benchmark, where it succeeded on 74.8% of tasks versus 51% for the best dedicated robot model — but the setup cost about $36.40 in tokens per attempt and took 18.56 seconds per model call, too slow for most factory floors.
This is OpenAI's third turn with robotics. It wound down an earlier team in 2020, rebuilt one in 2024 alongside a partnership with humanoid maker FigureDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, and saw that partnership end in February 2025 when Figure said it would build its own robot AI.
The signal: OpenAI is treating robotics as an application of general intelligence rather than a separate discipline. Guanya Shi of Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute said the move suggests OpenAI sees robotics as "no longer a special problem" — a bet the 2027 humanoid demonstration will test against real machines, real latency, and real factory floors.
Read more: fortune.com
Image credit: Office of Naval Research
