OpenAI
OpenAI re-established a robotics hardware team in 2024, hired former Meta hardware lead Caitlin Kalinowski, filed trademarks covering humanoid robots in 2025 and has been reported to be developing its own humanoid. It invested in Figure AI (collaboration ended February 2025), 1X and Physical Intelligence.
- Type
- big tech
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, California, United States
- Founded
- 2015
- Founders
- n/a
- Status
- active
- Employees (est.)
- n/d
- Disclosed funding
- n/d
- Valuation
- n/d
- Listed
- private
- Website
- openai.com
What the record says.
OpenAI, the San Francisco AI lab founded in 2015 and best known for ChatGPT, has no humanoid robot on the market and has never shown one. It is in this database because of its investments, its hiring and its stated intent.
The company came back to robots first as an investor, backing Figure AI and 1X Technologies, then as a builder. Caitlin Kalinowski, formerly head of hardware at Oculus and a MacBook design lead at Apple, joined in November 2024 to lead robotics and consumer hardware. Figure ended its OpenAI collaboration after its CEO said OpenAI was not committed enough to physical testing, and Figure now trains its own models. Kalinowski resigned in March 2026, saying OpenAI's Pentagon agreement left too little deliberation over surveillance and lethal autonomy.
In May 2026 OpenAI set up an internal robotics division under research VP Aditya Ramesh, hiring mechanical engineers for actuator design, sensors and prototyping, with a stated near-term focus on data-centre and infrastructure automation and a longer-term aim of household robots. A second robotics facility in Richmond, California was announced in December 2025. On the Sources podcast in early September 2026 Sam Altman said the company would definitely do a humanoid as well as other form factors. No prototype, timeline or partner for the hardware has been disclosed.
Milestones.
Figure ends its collaboration with OpenAI
Brett Adcock announces Figure is exiting its OpenAI agreement because of a breakthrough in fully in house AI. Two weeks later Figure publishes Helix.
Figure 01 talks and hands over an apple in an OpenAI powered demo
A video shows Figure 01 describing what it sees, handing an apple to a person and putting away dishes while explaining itself, using an OpenAI vision language model and Figure's neural network policies. The clip becomes the reference demo for language driven humanoids.
Figure raises 675 million dollars at a 2.6 billion valuation
Microsoft, OpenAI Startup Fund, Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, Intel Capital and others back the Series B, and Figure announces a collaboration with OpenAI to develop AI models for its robots. It is the largest humanoid round to date.
OpenAI Startup Fund leads a 23.5 million dollar round in 1X
Norwegian company 1X Technologies (formerly Halodi Robotics), maker of the wheeled EVE humanoid, raises a Series A2 led by the OpenAI Startup Fund with Tiger Global. It is OpenAI's first humanoid investment.
Figure AI: what $39 billion has shown so far
Four rounds, $1,754,000,000 raised, one named customer, no price and no unit count. The record on the most valuable humanoid company, generation by generation.
Startups, automakers, universities: who builds humanoids
108 makers, nine kinds. Startups hold 37 of the 44 humanoids you can order. Automakers, universities, big tech, conglomerates and NASA hold 45 robots between them and sell none of them.
Sources
- 01OpenAIOpenAI
- 02Sam Altman Confirms OpenAI Will Definitely Do a HumanoidHumanoids Daily
- 03Caitlin KalinowskiWikipedia
- 04OpenAI hardware chief resigns after AI models deployed on Pentagon's classified networksInteresting Engineering