OpenAI confirmed that the independent robotics research team has been disbanded.
The person in question did not leave. The core research team led by Researcher and Chief Research Officer Mark Chen was reorganized; the parts related to robot applications and hardware were transferred to the application division managed by President Greg Brockman. According to the company, their decision was not to abandon robotics as a whole, but rather to stop developing dedicated basic models specifically for robots.
The reason is that general-purpose models are already sufficient. Not long ago, NVIDIA released a set of data: in the RoboLab-120 simulation test, the task completion rate of the agent system based on GPT-6 Astra was 74.8%, while the best dedicated robot model in the rankings achieved only 51.0%.
This figure needs to be discounted when considered. It represents the performance in a simulation environment and also relies on additional agent execution frameworks. The inference speed and cost of general large models are still far from what is required for real-time control in actual factories or households.
This is not the first time OpenAI has restructured its robotics team. The team was disbanded in 2020, later re-established in 2024 and collaborated with Figure; however, that partnership came to an end in February 2025. This June, OpenAI resumed recruitment for the project, and it has only now been reintegrated into the main development efforts. In short, there have been several rounds of restructuring and reorganization.
The timing is also quite delicate. It has been reported that OpenAI incurred an operating loss of approximately $10.9 billion in the most recent quarter. The company is currently seeking a new round of financing and is also preparing for an IPO that could take place in early 2027. By integrating these independent teams into the main operational structure, the financial figures will appear more favorable.
The project to develop humanoid robots is still ongoing. Ortman had previously set the goal of holding the first public demonstration by 2027.