Ex-OpenAI executive Bob McGrew launches Arda to accelerate US manufacturing

OpenAI’s former head of research has been secretly working on a new business that aims to bring manufacturing back to the US using artificial intelligence (AI).

Bob McGrew’s new company, Arda, has raised $230 million in funding and is valued at $1.5 billion. Arda makes AI software that helps automate factory work. McGrew, who also spent more than 10 years as a senior product leader at Palantir, said the software is already being used at Anduril, a company that makes military technology.

McGrew told CNBC: “It’s a user interface and an agent that does for manufacturing engineers what Claude or Cursor does for programmers.”

“When a design changes, you can retrain a human in a day — but it takes three to six months in order to change the automation to reflect the new design.”

McGrew joined OpenAI in 2017. Before ChatGPT launched, he worked on problems that limited how well older computer systems could run AI models. He stayed at the company during a widely reported weekend in November 2023, when Sam Altman was suddenly fired and then brought back.

McGrew said he wanted to stay at OpenAI to help release its reasoning product, which he described as advanced machine reasoning that could come before artificial general intelligence (AGI). He said robotics is the next step in the product plan. He also believes that updating how factories operate can help industry grow and create more jobs in the US.

“Never successfully assemble one, and so if you can build a smartphone in the U.S. that is not taking away American jobs. That is bringing American jobs, McGrew continued.”