OpenAI has signalled it will enter the humanoid robot race, with chief executive Sam Altman saying in September that the company will "definitely do a humanoid," while naming no ship date, production target or manufacturing partner. A humanoid robot is a machine shaped roughly like a person so it can work in spaces and with tools built for people.
The interest of a leading AI company reflects a bet that the hard part of a useful robot is now the software brain rather than the mechanical body.
What it means: humanoid robots remain years from being an off-the-shelf purchase for a typical business, and an announcement of intent is not a product. The nearer-term takeaway is that the AI making these machines capable is the same AI already available in software today.