Investing in startups is not enough; OpenAI is reportedly considering developing humanoid robots

OpenAI may not be satisfied with merely investing in humanoid robot unicorns, but also wants to personally get involved in developing such robots.

On December 24th, Eastern Time, The Information reported, citing informed sources, that OpenAI is recently considering creating its own humanoid robot. However, for OpenAI, any potential efforts to develop humanoid robots will not take precedence over other technology and product research and development, such as artificial intelligence (AI) reasoning models and AI agents that help automate various software engineering and analytical tasks.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to or comment on the report. If the news is true, it would highlight OpenAI's inclination towards a competitive model with some major clients and important partners.

At the end of February this year, the star robot startup Figure confirmed OpenAI's participation in a $675 million Series B financing round. Just a few days later, Figure released a demonstration video of its first robot, Figure 01, powered by OpenAI's large model, showing that the humanoid robot completed tasks such as handing an apple to a human and placing dishes on a drying rack using only one neural network.

Figure's founder Brett Adcock stated at the time that the Figure 01 in the video demonstrated a dialogue with humans under an end-to-end neural network framework, without any remote operation. Moreover, the robot's speed has significantly improved, beginning to approach human speed.

The report from The Information on Tuesday suggests that considering the direct development of humanoid robots underscores OpenAI's ambitions across various fields, from search engines and web browsers to server chips and data centers. After all, Musk has mentioned that humanoid robots represent a market opportunity worth $1 trillion annually, and it is only a matter of time before competitors like OpenAI and Google join this race.

The report also pointed out that OpenAI's ambition to develop humanoid robots could have an unexpected impact: greater reliance on China, as China is crucial to the supply chain and manufacturing of robots.

If OpenAI truly intends to develop humanoid robots, it could be the latest move following the restart of OpenAI's robotics research and development.

From its inception, robotics technology has been one of OpenAI's research focuses, with co-founder Wojciech Zaremba leading a team that initially attempted to create a "general-purpose robot." Robotics technology has been one of OpenAI's research focuses since its establishment, with co-founder Wojciech Zaremba leading a team that initially attempted to create a "general-purpose robot." In early June, Wallstreetcn mentioned that OpenAI officially restarted its robotics project this year. At that time, the media reported that OpenAI was recruiting key research engineers for the new robotics team, which has been operational for two months. Subsequently, an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed that recruitment for the team had begun and stated that the recently hired employees would become "one of the first members of this brand new team."

OpenAI Vice President Peter Welinder has stated that by collaborating with companies like Figure, OpenAI hopes to explore the level of intelligence that humanoid robots can achieve with the support of large multimodal AI models. In this regard, the restart of the robotics project suggests that OpenAI may focus on developing the "brain" of the robot, namely a highly intelligent AI system, while leaving the development of the robot's physical body to partners