OpenAI starts with infrastructure robots but aims for "everyone having a personal robot doing anything they need"

OpenAI is rebuilding its robotics team to pursue general-purpose robots, beginning with infrastructure tasks before moving toward personal robots.

The effort was restarted in January 2025 after the robotics unit was shut down in 2020, with leadership linked to world-simulation research and the former Sora team.

The move suggests OpenAI wants embodied AI data and new model approaches to support its broader AGI roadmap.

It also signals a renewed push into consumer and hardware markets even as OpenAI keeps building out AI agent applications.