OpenAI says no money changed hands in the collaboration. But because the work could benefit Retro—whose biggest investor is Altman—the announcement may add to questions swirling around the OpenAI CEO’s side projects.

Last year, the Wall Street Journal said Altman’s wide-ranging investments in private tech startups amount to an “opaque investment empire” that is “creating a mounting list of potential conflicts,” since some of these companies also do business with OpenAI.

In Retro’s case, simply being associated with Altman, OpenAI, and the race toward AGI could boost its profile and increase its ability to hire staff and raise funds. Betts-Lacroix did not answer questions about whether the early-stage company is currently in fundraising mode.

Google is establishing a team to build AI that can simulate the physical world, led by one of the former co-leads on OpenAI’s Sora model.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the first artificial intelligence agents might enter the workforce this year as his company inches closer to developing humanlike artificial general intelligence (AGI).

“We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents ‘join the workforce’ and materially change the output of companies,” said Altman in a blog post titled “Reflections” on Jan. 6.

AI agents or agentic AI refers to artificial intelligence systems that exhibit autonomous decision-making and goal-directed behavior. They can autonomously understand complex goals, make decisions, take actions with minimal human intervention and execute multi-step reasoning processes.