OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has outlined a vision for the future of robotics, emphasizing the development of personal robots that can perform any task a person might need. The company is currently hiring engineers for hardware, operations, systems, and machine learning roles to support this initiative. In the near term, robots will assist specialists in building infrastructure, while long-term goals include widespread access to personal robots. According to Altman, the robotics team originated from the world simulation research program led by Aditya Ramesh, which also absorbed the Sora team following the shutdown of the AI video app. OpenAI closed its robotics division in 2020, citing that general artificial intelligence could be reached faster without robots and that robot training data was too scarce. Since January 2025, the team has been rebuilt with the goal of developing general-purpose robots that push progress toward AGI. What exactly OpenAI hopes to achieve remains unclear, especially with the company’s recent strategic shift toward AI agent apps. Altman’s stated goal is likely many years away. The real play may be training data and alternative AI approaches using embodied AI models. Source: [thedecoder](https://the-decoder.com/openai-starts-with-infrastructure-robots-but-aims-for-everyone-having-a-personal-robot-doing-anything-they-need/)