OpenAI has disbanded its stand-alone robotics team and moved its researchers into other parts of the company, a reorganization OpenAI confirmed on Nov. 13. Robotics research staff now report to Chief Research Officer Mark Chen, while the applied robotics and hardware teams have moved into the Applied organization led by OpenAI President Greg Brockman.
OpenAI says the change is meant to speed up its robotics work, not retreat from it. A company spokesperson said robotics remains a core part of OpenAI's long-term vision and that the company is still committed to bringing general-purpose robots into the world. CEO Sam Altman is targeting a first public demonstration of OpenAI's own humanoid robot in 2027.
The move reflects a change in technical strategy. At the start of the year, according to the company, OpenAI researchers assumed that building on Sora, its video generation model, was the best path into robotics. Since then, general-purpose frontier models including GPT-6 Astra have shown they can be applied directly to robots, which weakens the case for a separate team building specialized robot models.
Key facts
- 01OpenAI confirmed on Nov. 13, 2026 that it has disbanded its stand-alone robotics team.
- 02Robotics researchers now report to Chief Research Officer Mark Chen; applied robotics and hardware moved under President Greg Brockman.
- 03In an Nvidia study, a GPT-6 Astra-powered agent hit 74.8% on a simulated manipulation benchmark vs 51.0% for specialized robot models.
- 04CEO Sam Altman is targeting a first public demonstration of OpenAI's humanoid robot in 2027.
- 05It is the second time OpenAI has wound down a robotics group, after shutting its first team in 2020.
The benchmark numbers back that bet. In an Nvidia study, an agent powered by GPT-6 Astra reached a 74.8% success rate on a simulated manipulation benchmark, compared with 51.0% for the best specialized robotic models on that leaderboard. Guanya Shi, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, said robotics is "no longer a special problem."
Not everyone in the field is ready to call a winner. Pete Florence, cofounder of Generalist, a startup training general-purpose AI models for robots, said it is unclear that any existing model will dominate robotics.
“There may be different starting points for how to grow intelligence”— Pete Florence, Cofounder of Generalist
This is the second time OpenAI has wound down a robotics group. The company had a robotics team in its early years and shut it in 2020, with cofounder Wojciech Zaremba later pointing to limited robot data as the constraint. OpenAI rebuilt a stand-alone team in 2024 alongside a partnership with humanoid maker Figure, which ended in February 2025 when Figure said it would develop its own robot AI.
The reorganization also lands as OpenAI narrows its focus. The company's operating loss reportedly reached $10.9 billion in its most recent quarter, it is seeking a new funding round, and it is preparing for a possible IPO in early 2027. Altman told the company last year that it needed to abandon "side quests," and Sora was among the efforts cut.
The change was visible at the Conference on Robot Learning in Austin, where OpenAI had registered booth 208. The booth sat empty.
For now, OpenAI's robotics effort runs through the same research and product organizations that build its general models, and the company says its 2027 humanoid demonstration remains the target.
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