OpenAI ends its robotics team after 2 years

OpenAI has broken up its stand-alone robotics team, Fortune reported on the 13th of November 2026. OpenAI confirmed the change to Fortune.

Robotics researchers now sit in the main research team under research chief Mark Chen. Hardware staff moved to the Applied group under president Greg Brockman.

Why OpenAI says it did this

OpenAI said its general AI models, such as GPT-6 Astra, can now run some robot tasks directly, Fortune reported. It said robots remain part of its long-term plans.

In an Nvidia study, an agent using Astra succeeded 74.8 percent of the time on a simulated robot test. The best robot-only models scored 51 percent, Fortune said.

A team with a long history

OpenAI closed an earlier robotics team in 2020 and rebuilt one in 2024, Fortune said. A partnership with robot maker Figure ended in February 2025.

Chief executive Sam Altman aims to show an OpenAI humanoid robot in 2027, Fortune reported.

An empty booth

OpenAI had booked a booth at CoRL, a top robotics conference in Austin this week. When Fortune visited, the booth was empty, the outlet reported.

Below we break down the test

Astra beat the best robot-only score by 23.8 points, by our arithmetic. The test ran on a computer simulation of a robot only.

What is confirmed and what is not

A simulated test does not prove a model can run real robots in every workplace. Some experts told Fortune that robot firms still gain from real-world data.

Key facts

OpenAI has broken up its stand-alone robotics team.

Researchers moved to the main research team and hardware staff to Applied.

OpenAI says general models like GPT-6 Astra can run some robot tasks.

OpenAI still plans to show a humanoid robot in 2027.