GoKawiilOpenAI folds standalone robotics team into broader research and applied groups
OpenAI has disbanded its dedicated robotics team, reassigning researchers to its main research organization under Chief Research Officer Mark Chen, and moving applied robotics and hardware staff into its Applied organization under President Greg Brockman. The company told Fortune this reflects deepening commitment to robotics rather than a pullback, even as its booth at the CoRL robotics conference in Austin sat empty this week.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
The move suggests OpenAI may see robotics less as a separate research frontier and more as another domain for its general-purpose models to operate in, consistent with its broader bet on scaling large models rather than building specialized systems. OpenAI has a history of starting and stopping robotics efforts—disbanding a team in 2020, rebuilding one in 2024 with Figure, then losing that partnership in 2025—which could raise questions about how stable its robotics strategy really is, even as Sam Altman has pointed to a 2027 target for a humanoid robot demo.
- OpenAI dissolved its standalone robotics team, folding staff into its main research and applied divisions.
- The company says this reflects commitment to robotics, not abandonment, despite an empty conference booth at CoRL.
- This marks OpenAI's third major shift in robotics strategy since 2020, after disbanding, rebuilding, and losing its Figure partnership.
Source: fortune.com — Wen Shao, 2026-11-13
Published there as: “OpenAI disbands its robotics team as its general models start running robots”
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