OpenAI wants you to have a personal robot; starts hiring for robotics division

OpenAI is doubling down on its robotics ambitions with CEO Sam Altman announcing that the company is actively hiring full-stack hardware, operations, systems, and machine learning engineers for its robotics team.

The robotics division grew out of OpenAI's world simulation research program, led by Aditya Ramesh, the researcher also known for his work on DALL-E.

Altman said AI should help people in the physical world. "In the short term, we are focused on robots to support skilled workers to build our future infrastructure; in the long term, we imagine everyone having a personal robot doing anything they need," he wrote.



The company has delved into robotics before. In 2019, OpenAI had launched a project featuring a robotic hand solving a Rubik's Cube, but the team was shut down a year later as it pivoted to focus on large language models.

The company has since invested in robotics companies, including 1X, Figure and Physical Intelligence, though its partnership with Figure to develop AI models for humanoid robots ended in early 2025.

The industry is booming on the back of advances in AI and an intensifying race between the US and China. Morgan Stanley estimates the humanoid robotics market could exceed $5 trillion by 2050.

This is also part of a broader hardware push at OpenAI. The company acquired Jony Ive's hardware startup io Products for approximately $6.5 billion in May 2025, with consumer AI devices expected to follow.