OpenAI’s robotics chief quits over the Pentagon deal

Caitlin Kalinowski spent 16 months building OpenAI’s physical AI programme. On Saturday, she said the company moved too fast on something too important.

The week that began with Anthropic being blacklisted by the Pentagon and ended with OpenAI taking its contract has now claimed OpenAI’s most senior hardware executive.

Caitlin Kalinowski, who joined OpenAI in November 2024 to lead its robotics and consumer hardware division, announced her resignation on Saturday on X. Her statement was short, direct, and more candid than anything OpenAI itself has said about the deal.

“AI has an important role in national security,” she wrote. “But surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got.”

In a subsequent post, she was more precise about the nature of the complaint. “It’s a governance concern first and foremost,” she ...