OpenAI Reboots Robotics with $310K Salaries for AGI-Level Engineers

OpenAI is getting back into the robotics business. The company is hiring for several engineering roles in San Francisco, including Electrical Engineers and Control Systems Software Engineers, to develop general-purpose machines with AGI-level intelligence.

This is not the company's first robotics effort. It ran a hand-manipulation project from 2017 to 2019 but pivoted to language models. Now, the focus is back on hardware.

Reports from early May 2026 suggest OpenAI may spin out its robotics and consumer hardware divisions. The base salaries for these roles range from $210,000 to $310,000, plus equity, signaling an intensifying talent war with Google DeepMind, Tesla, and other startups.

The specific roles point to a strategy of training robots through billions of simulated scenarios before real-world deployment.