OpenAI is offering robotics engineers up to half a million dollars a year in base salaries as it builds out its robotics efforts.
The company has 27 robotics jobs listed on its careers page, up from 11 in May, spanning hardware, software, data collection, and prototyping, according to Business Insider’s review. Publicly advertised base salaries range from $177,000 to half a million dollars a year, before equity.
The listings offer a closer look at the range of robotics work OpenAI is doing itself. The company is hiring people to design and build hardware, collect the data needed to train robots, and test them, not just develop software that controls them.
OpenAI is hiring actuator design engineers, who build the motors and mechanisms that move a robot’s joints, alongside software, firmware, and machine-learning engineers. It is looking for a lab technician to help “develop, build, test, and iterate on robotic systems,” as well as a lawyer dedicated to the robotics team.
Another role would oversee OpenAI’s “data collection facilities,” pointing to one of the industry’s biggest bottlenecks. Unlike large language models, which could be trained on vast amounts of data already on the internet, robots need examples of how people and machines interact with the physical world. Robotics companies often have to generate that data themselves or buy it from outside vendors.
The highest-paid opening is for a machine-learning engineer working on distributed data systems, infrastructure for processing and moving large amounts of robotics training data across computers. The role lists a base salary of up to $500,000.
OpenAI declined to comment.
Guy Hoffman, a Cornell mechanical and aerospace engineering professor who leads the university’s Human-Robot Collaboration and Companionship Lab, reviewed all 27 postings for Business Insider. He said OpenAI appears to be assembling a “custom robot design team.”
The postings nod at OpenAI’s long-term robotics ambitions. One says the robotics team is focused on “unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence” and is exploring “a broad range of robotics form factors.” Another says its long-term vision is “everyone having a personal robot doing anything they need.”
OpenAI wants to build the hardware, too
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has grown more explicit about OpenAI’s robotics ambitions in recent months.
“We will definitely do a humanoid,” Altman told investor Alex Heath on the Sources podcast earlier this month. “We will do other form factors as well.”
OpenAI’s robotics team is led by Aditya Ramesh, a longtime researcher best known for creating DALL·E, the company’s image generator, and later working on Sora, its AI video generator. He also worked on OpenAI’s world-simulation models, which are designed to simulate how the physical world works.
OpenAI previously experimented with robotics before shuttering the project behind a robotic hand that could solve a Rubik’s Cube in 2020. The company’s return to robotics comes as billions of dollars pour into “physical AI,” the industry term for putting increasingly capable AI models into machines that can act in the real world.
Business Insider reported earlier this year that OpenAI was teaching a robotic arm to perform household tasks as part of its humanoid effort.
If OpenAI builds its own humanoid, it would put the company in direct competition with some of the most heavily funded robotics efforts in Silicon Valley, including Tesla, which is building the humanoid Optimus, and Figure AI. OpenAI Startup Fund, a venture fund affiliated with OpenAI, is an investor in Figure. OpenAI previously partnered with Figure on robot AI models.
The postings don’t reveal much about what OpenAI’s robots will ultimately look like.
Hoffman said references to laser range finders and batteries “vaguely imply” an untethered mobile robot, but do not indicate whether it would move on wheels or legs.
He added that the postings indicate what OpenAI may not be prioritizing.
“There is not a lot of electronics work sought, so I don’t think there will be a focus on sensors beyond off-the-shelf cameras, microphones, and laser range finders,” Hoffman said. Laser range finders use light to measure distances, helping robots map and navigate their surroundings.
Altman has identified data centers as an early application for robots and suggested that robots could eventually perform household tasks as personal assistants.
“There will of course be data center robots that have, like, different form factors,” he said. “Someday, I think everyone should have a personal robot.”
Have a tip? Contact Rya Jetha via email at [email protected] or Signal at rjetha.07. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.
