OpenAI is best known for its AI models, which to date exist primarily on cloud servers, its website, and in its apps for PCs and mobile devices.

However, the company is not limiting its ambitions to the software realm: today on X, Caitlin Kalinowski, currently a Member of the Technical Staff at OpenAI, previously Head of AR Glasses at Meta, posted a message announcing that the firm is hiring its first hardware robotics roles.

These include an EE Sensing engineer “to help us the design sensor suite for our robots,” and a Robotics Mechanical Design Engineer to design “gears, actuators, motors and linkages for robots.”

The listings also include a description of the effort as follows:

“Our Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model stack, we integrate cutting-edge hardware and software to explore a broad range of robotic form factors. We strive to seamlessly blend high-level AI capabilities with the physical constraints of physical.”

Kalinowsky herself announced her hiring at OpenAI a little more than two months ago “to lead robotics and consumer hardware.”

Previously, OpenAI had been reported to be working on hardware with former Apple lead designer Jony Ive, and the company has partnered with robotics startup Figure to provide the models powering the latter’s humanoid robots.

However, the new post from Kalinowsky and job listings signal the company’s most serious and heaviest inve...