OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has placed a quiet, personal bet on a new physical AI company, adding fresh momentum to a sector that is rapidly becoming the next frontier for venture capital. The startup, called Alfred, is run by former Tesla and Meta employees and counts Altman among its earliest backers, according to a recent report by Business Insider.
Alfred was co-founded by Ankit Ukil, a former designer at Tesla, and Dömötör Gulyas, a former engineer at Meta Reality Labs, the report states. The company is building a software platform designed to help engineers accelerate the development of physical machines, compressing the research and development timelines that typically slow down manufacturing. Ukil told Business Insider that the ultimate goal is to let engineers skip repetitive grunt work and focus on higher-value tasks, such as adding new features to vehicles.
The startup is currently raising funds at a $40 million valuation, with backing from Khosla Ventures, SV Angel, Chapter One, and other investors. Altman invested through his venture capital firm, Hydrazine Capital, though the exact amount of his investment has not been specified.
Alfred is based in Hawthorne, California, and its wider team includes designers and engineers from Tesla, Ford, and Honda. The company is in active discussions with unnamed automakers, defence firms, and robotics companies, though its flagship platform remains under development, Business Insider reports.
The investment lands amid a broader frenzy around physical AI. Startups in the category raised roughly $5.3 billion in venture funding in April alone, according to Crunchbase data. Large technology companies are also piling in. At the Nvidia GTC Taipei conference on Sunday, the chipmaker unveiled a standard humanoid robot blueprint for academic researchers, expected later this year.
ltman has been vocal about his ambitions. Over the weekend, he posted on X that robotics is OpenAI’s next frontier, sketching a near-term focus on machines that assist skilled workers and a longer-term vision of personal robots for everyone. He has made more than 170 investments over 15 years, per PitchBook, a portfolio that has helped make him a billionaire. Neither Altman nor OpenAI responded to requests for comment from Business Insider.
