OpenAI has officially announced a strategic initiative: it will continue to strengthen the U.S. artificial intelligence supply chain in the coming years and increase investment in domestic manufacturing capabilities. As a key step in this plan, OpenAI has simultaneously released a new Request for Proposal (RFP) targeting businesses across the United States, with a clear focus on three core areas—data center input devices, consumer electronics, and robotics technology.

This move marks OpenAI's expansion from pure software and model development toward a more complete AI industry ecosystem. The announcement states that building a secure, reliable, and resilient local supply chain has become the foundation for its long-term technological development and product implementation. By promoting the design and manufacturing of critical components in the U.S., OpenAI aims to reduce reliance on external sources while responding to the U.S. government's recent policy orientation toward "bringing key technologies back home."

This RFP particularly emphasizes "end-to-end controllability." At the data center level, OpenAI is seeking local input device suppliers with high performance and low latency to optimize its large-scale AI training and inference infrastructure; in the consumer electronics direction, the company focuses on hardware platforms capable of integrating its AI capabilities, such as smart terminals or interactive devices; and in the field of robotics, it sends a clear signal—OpenAI is paving the way for the mass production of embodied AI products and urgently needs domestic partners with precision manufacturing and system integration capabilities.

Although OpenAI has not disclosed specific investment amounts or a list of partner companies, this move has sent a strong signal: the global AI competition is evolving from the algorithmic level toward deeper manufacturing and supply chain dimensions. After chips and cloud services, hardware manufacturing capabilities have become the new battlefield for tech giants to build their moats.

Notably, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has repeatedly emphasized publicly that "AI needs physical carriers" in recent years and has personally invested in several hardware and neural interface companies. This push for supply chain localization is not only about efficiency and security but may also be a crucial prerequisite step in his strategy for the next generation of AI products—from cloud-based large models to intelligent entities in the physical world.

When AI is no longer just code and data, but embedded in chips, screens, and robotic arms, OpenAI's RFP may be the prelude to the revival of U.S. AI manufacturing.