OpenAI and Intel target humanoid robot development

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has indicated that the company aims to demonstrate a humanoid robot by 2027. Altman noted that while the company will explore various form factors, a humanoid shape is practical because the world is designed for human dimensions, including tools and architecture. He emphasized that developing the “brain” to interpret sensors and coordinate complex tasks is a more significant challenge than building the physical body.

In the semiconductor sector, Intel is planning to release the Razor Lake AX, a system-on-chip specifically designed for robotics, by 2028. This chip targets a performance level of approximately 700 TOPS (Tera Operations Per Second), significantly higher than current industry benchmarks.

Other major hardware players, including Qualcomm, Micron, and Renesas, are also investing in specialized architectures to meet the high computational and memory bandwidth requirements of physical AI. Industry experts highlight that humanoid robots require much higher complexity than autonomous vehicles, often involving around 60 degrees of freedom.