OpenAI Acquires Jony Ive's io for $6.5B, Signaling Major Push into AI Hardware

Apple legend Jony Ive takes control of OpenAI's design future

On Wednesday, OpenAI announced that former Apple design chief Jony Ive and his design firm LoveFrom will take over creative and design control at OpenAI. The deal makes Ive responsible for shaping the future look and feel of AI products at the chatbot creator, extending across all of the company's ventures, including ChatGPT. Jony Ive was Apple's chief design officer for nearly three decades, where he led the design of iconic products including the iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and Apple Watch, earning numerous industry awards and helping transform Apple into the world's most valuable company through his minimalist design philosophy. "Thrilled to be partnering with jony, imo the greatest designer in the world," tweeted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman while sharing a 9-minute promotional video touting the personal and professional relationship between Ive and Altman. Ive left Apple in 2019 to found LoveFrom, a design firm that has worked with companies including Ferrari, Airbnb, and luxury Italian fashion firm Moncler. The mechanics of the Ive-OpenAI deal are slightly convoluted. At its core, OpenAI will acquire Ive's company "io" in an all-equity deal valued at $6.5 billion -- Ive founded io last year to design and develop AI-powered products. Meanwhile, io's staff of approximately 55 engineers, scientists, researchers, physicists, and product development specialists will become part of OpenAI. Meanwhile, Ive's design firm LoveFrom will continue to operate independently, with OpenAI becoming a customer of LoveFrom, while LoveFrom will receive a stake in OpenAI. The companies expect the transaction to close this summer pending regulatory approval.

OpenAI's next big bet won't be a wearable: report | TechCrunch

OpenAI pushed generative AI into the public consciousness. Now, it could be developing a very different kind of AI device. According to a WSJ report, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees Wednesday that the company's next major product won't be a wearable. Instead, it will be a compact, screenless device, fully aware of its user's surroundings. Small enough to sit on a desk or fit in a pocket, Altman described it as both a "third core device" alongside a MacBook Pro and iPhone, and an "AI companion" integrated into daily life. The preview followed OpenAI's announcement that it will acquire io, a startup founded just last year by former Apple designer Jony Ive, in a $6.5 billion equity deal. Ive will take on a key creative and design role at OpenAI. Altman reportedly told employees the acquisition could eventually add $1 trillion in market value to the company as it creates a new category of devices unlike the handhelds, wearables, or glasses that other outfits have rolled out. Altman also reportedly emphasized to staff that secrecy will be critical to prevent competitors from copying the product before launch. A recording of his remarks leaked to the Journal raises questions about how much he can trust his own team and how much more he'll be willing to disclose.

OpenAI goes all in with Jony Ive as Google plays AI catchup

OpenAI just made its biggest acquisition yet, scooping up Jony Ive and Sam Altman's secretive device startup, io, in a $6.5 billion all-equity deal. Ive, the legendary designer behind the iPhone and other iconic Apple products, will now lead creative and design work at OpenAI through his firm LoveFrom. The goal? To take AI "beyond the screen" and build a new generation of AI-powered consumer devices. Beyond the tech, there's a clear narrative play here. OpenAI is framing Altman as the Jobs-esque visionary and Ive as the design genius who makes it all real. Social media had a field day with the staged buddy shots of the duo, but the messaging is hard to miss: Take the iPhone launch, and make it AI. Today, on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Max Zeff, and Anthony Ha unpack the deal, dive into AI wearables, and discuss more of this week's tech headlines.

Jony Ive to lead OpenAI's design work following $6.5B acquisition of his company

Famed Apple product designer Jony Ive will now lead creative and design work at OpenAI, the result on an usual deal announced on Wednesday. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Ive have been working on an AI device that will move consumers beyond screens for roughly two years, according to The Wall Street Journal. "Thrilled to be partnering with Jony, imo the greatest designer in the world," said Altman in a post on X Wednesday. "Excited to try to create a new generation of AI-powered computers." OpenAI is taking an all-equity stake in io, a joint venture between Sam Altman and Ive. The deal values the venture at $6.5 billion; OpenAI previously had a 23% stake, according to the Journal. Io has a staff of around 55 engineers, scientists, researchers, physicists, and product development specialists, per The Wall Street Journal. They will become part of OpenAI. Meanwhile, Ive will retain control of his design firm, LoveFrom, which will continue to operate independently. OpenAI and Ive's collaboration puts one of the iPhone's lead designers at the forefront of the newest technology wave, generative AI. Since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, OpenAI has amped up its consumer business significantly. Earlier this month, the company appointed former Meta executive and Instacart CEO Fidji Simo to lead its consumer applications. Should OpenAI release a consumer hardware device, Ive could help the startup directly compete with Apple. Io, under OpenAI, will develop AI-powered consumer devices and other projects. The Wall Street Journal reports that Ive will have an expansive role, giving input into future versions of ChatGPT and more. The Information first reported on OpenAI's discussions to acquire io in March. At the time, the two companies had discussed building a device that would bring a version of the technology from the movie "Her" to life.

OpenAI's Big Bet That Jony Ive Can Make AI Hardware Work

Io, a firm Ive and Sam Altman cocreated, will now merge with OpenAI. OpenAI has fully acquired Io, a joint venture it cocreated last year with Jony Ive, the famed British designer behind the sleek industrial aesthetic that defined the iPhone and more than two decades of Apple products. In a nearly 10-minute video posted to X Wednesday, Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the Apple pioneer's "creative collective" will "merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering, and product teams in San Francisco." OpenAI says it's paying $5 billion dollars in equity to acquire io. The promotional video included musings on technology from both Ive and Altman, set against the golden-hour backdrop of the streets of San Francisco, but the two never share exactly what it is they're building. "We look forward to sharing our work next year," a text statement at the end of the video reads. Given the pair's emphasis on building a hardware device for the AI era, and Ive's pedigree at Apple, it's likely a consumer-facing product. Io launched last spring as part of a joint project between Ive's design firm LoveFrom and OpenAI. In the fourth quarter of last year, Io and OpenAI entered into an official agreement for OpenAI to receive a 23 percent stake in io. Now, OpenAI is buying the entity outright. The merger is a slightly complicated one. The Io team was made up of 55 people prior to this announcement. Now it will expand to include both io and OpenAI employees -- hardware and software engineers, physicists, scientists, and "experts in product development and manufacturing," according to a blog post on OpenAI's website. Ive and Lovefrom will manage the creative design process. But Ive himself will remain independent, OpenAI says, and his firm LoveFrom will continue to operate as a separate entity. The io team will instead report into Peter Welinder, OpenAI's vice president of product, who has worked at OpenAI for eight and a half years. Io's founding team has major design chops. Beyond Ive, the founders include Evans Hankey and Tang Tan, who both worked at Apple. Those who've worked closely with them say they're known to hire people whom they believe have exceptional taste. By bringing on Ive, OpenAI is officially embarking on what is likely one of the more ambitious AI hardware project to date. A number of other major tech companies, including Meta and Google, have tried developing AI-powered devices such as smartglasses in recent years, but mainstream adoption of the technology has been slow and some devices have been plagued by glitches. Humane, another high-profile AI hardware startup founded by former Apple employees, debuted a wearable device in late 2023. Reviewers later found the device, a pin, was susceptible to overheating and a number of other issues. Less than two years later, Humane's devices were pulled from the market and its operating system software and patents were sold to printer giant HP. The joint effort between Altman and Ive was spurred by advancements in AI and also compute power. In its blog post, OpenAI wrote that "computers are now seeing, thinking and understanding." Altman reportedly has hardware ambitions beyond the generative AI software his company develops and sells, and Ive has seemingly been eager to make new imprints in the design world since he left Apple in 2019. "I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the past 30 years has led me to this moment," Ive said in the video. "While I am both anxious and excited about the responsibility of the substantial work ahead, I am so grateful for the opportunity to be a part of such an important collaboration."

OpenAI Acquires iPhone Designer Jony Ive's Firm Amid Rumors of Screenless Phone

Thomas is a native of upstate New York and a graduate of the University at Albany. As a member of CNET's How To team, he writes about the intersection of policy, information and technology, and how you can best be served in that area. Outside of work, he can most often be found watching too many movies, reading too much, drinking too much coffee, or spending time with his cats. OpenAI on Wednesday announced the $6.5 billion acquisition of io, a technology design company founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive, reinvigorating rumors that the company is looking to produce an AI-centric smartphone. Best known for helping design Apple's iPhone, Ive and 55 other employees coming over from io will take over creative and design oversight across the entirety of OpenAI. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, this will include having a design hand in everything from "future versions of ChatGPT to audio features, its app and other products, according to people familiar with the matter." Founded after Ive left Apple in 2019, io's original intention was to develop a new line of AI-powered products. The marriage of OpenAI and io has been rumored to center around a new screenless smartphone. Last month, io denied that a phone was in the works, while OpenAI did not comment. The Wall Street Journal noted in its report that "people familiar with the matter" have claimed that the partnership is working towards "a new device that will move consumers beyond screens." OpenAI and Ive have reportedly been partnering on an unrevealed line of products for the past two years, with devices beyond a phone also under consideration. "I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this moment," Ive said in an official statement about the acquisition. Whether this rumored screen-free smartphone can find purchase in the modern landscape remains to be seen. It's hard to imagine today's consumers embracing a phone without the ability to view, say, TikTok videos, and while there has been a recent movement of folks towards less distracting "dumb" phones, those folks don't seem like the type that would want something heavily geared towards AI. A representative for OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

What to Expect (and Not Expect) From OpenAI and Jony Ive's AI-Centric 'Screenless Phone'

Expertise Energy, solar power, renewable energy, climate issues, EVs, plug-in hybrids, EV charging infrastructure, home electrification, deregulated energy, personal finance, mortgages, home equity, the housing market, loans, banking, taxes, credit cards. AI is coming for your phones -- this you know by now and maybe you've already experienced it for yourself in the form of Apple Intelligence or Google's Gemini. But OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT and perhaps the biggest name in AI software and services right now, is making a different bet. It's looking beyond the traditional smartphone and thinking about how AI might reinvent our devices altogether. On Wednesday, the company announced that it had bought Jony Ive's device startup IO for $6.5 billion. Together, Ive and Altman are building something new -- a device unlike anything we've owned before, with AI at its core. "It became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company," the pair said in a statement about their working relationship. "The IO team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco." Ive is the visionary veteran Apple designer, who together with Steve Jobs created the iPhone, along with a long list of Apple devices. Now he's turned his attention to creating a fresh device category, which has clearly piqued the interest of Altman. Ive's startup has reportedly been working on a "screenless phone" -- although other reports suggest it's actually not a phone at all. Rumors of this mysterious AI-focused device have been circulating for months but Ive and Altman are keeping a tight lid on the details, fearing that a competitor may try to beat them to market. So, for now, we'll just have to imagine. The obvious existing point of comparison is the Humane AI Pin, an AI-specific device designed to be worn clipped to your collar. It launched to much fanfare in February 2024, but turned out to be a spectacular failure, creating a lasting air of pessimism around the entire idea of AI devices. "It is unsurprising that there is skepticism about this type of product, particularly in the context of the high-profile failure of the Humane AI, which captured the imagination of tech enthusiasts, including me, but turned out to be a classic example of over-promising and under-delivering," said Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight. The combination of Ive and Altman though, is full of potential. "It would be foolish to bet against Jony Ive, given his remarkable track record of delivering products that disrupt a market," said Wood. "I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this moment," Ive said in a YouTube video in which the pair talk about their friendship. Their challenge, says Thoman Husson, VP principal analyst at Forrester, "is not just to use AI to enhance existing tasks, but to invent new products and experiences." That said, OpenAI's ambitions for its AI devices are that it's able to ship 100 million units -- a bold bet for a software company entering the hardware space for the first time, with no pre-established supply chain. "Jony Ive is an exceptional designer but smartphones (and hardware) is a volume play about scale and scope," said Husson. "I think Apple is still best placed to win this marathon race." In the absence of any substantial hints or clues, we remain for now in the dark as to what this first piece of OpenAI hardware will look like, how it will function and how it will fit into our lives. There's been some speculation, based largely on claims made by reliable Apple analyst Ming Chi Kuo, that the OpenAI device will be a wearable. In a social media post, Kuo said the io product was designed to be worn around the neck and was "as compact and elegant as an iPod Shuffle." This would indicate that Altman and Ive are taking a different approach to Meta, which has gone all in on smart glasses. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the glasses are the ultimate AI device, because of their ability to receive and deliver information in close proximity to your eyes and and ears. But we should also be prepared for the possibility that Altman and Ive's device isn't a wearable at all. According to the Wall Street Journal, Altman said Ive was skeptical about the idea of AI wearables, making it sound unlikely that he would embrace them as part of this project. Citing a briefing given by Altman to OpenAI employees, the WSJ reports that the device "will be unobtrusive, able to rest in one's pocket or on one's desk, and will be a third core device a person would put on a desk after a MacBook Pro and an iPhone." It's curious to see the OpenAI screenless phone being discussed this way, almost as if it falls within Apple's specific family of products. The WSJ said Altman is envisaging in the long term "a family of devices," which will be defined by what Ive described as "a new design movement." Perhaps the only thing we know for sure about this product is that it won't come with a screen. Altman has been critical of the amount of time we spend looking at screens -- but is there room on the market for devices that tempt us away from our screens? "Except smartwatches, no new product category has emerged since the smartphone," said Husson. "There is room for disruption and innovation." This not-a-phone, not-a-wearable currently exists to us only as an amorphous third thing -- and likely will do for some time yet. Keep checking back for more rumors and updates, which we will add as we get more information about what kind of device may rule our lives in the near future, just as the smartphone does today.

OpenAI is buying Jony Ive's AI hardware company

About 55 hardware engineers, software developers, and manufacturing experts will join OpenAI as part of the acquisition. That includes Cannon, Hankey, and Tan. The first devices following the acquisition are set to launch in 2026. In an interview with Bloomberg, Ive called AI hardware misfires like the Humane Pin and Rabbit R1, "very poor products," and said that "There has been an absence of new ways of thinking expressed in products.""We gathered together the best hardware and software engineers, the best technologists, physicists, scientists, researchers and experts in product development and manufacturing," Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a joint post. "Many of us have worked closely for decades. The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco."

Jony Ive's AI gadget rumored to be 'slightly larger' than Humane's AI pin

Emma Roth is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO. More details are trickling out about Jony Ive and Sam Altman's new AI device. In a post on Thursday, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says his research indicates that the device could be larger than Humane's AI pin, but with a "form factor as compact and elegant as an iPod Shuffle." Kuo adds that "one of the intended use cases" is wearing the device around your neck. It also may not come with a display, Kuo says, featuring just built-in cameras and microphones for "environmental detection." The device could also connect to smartphones and PCs to use their computing and display capabilities. This latest leak aligns with a report from The Wall Street Journal, which says the device will be aware of a user's life and surroundings, but probably won't be a pair of glasses. On Wednesday, Altman revealed that OpenAI is buying Ive's AI hardware company, io, for $6.5 billion, which will "take over design for all of OpenAI, including its software." Ive and Altman are aiming to launch their first devices in 2026.

OpenAI goes all in on hardware, will buy Jony Ive's AI startup

On acquiring the startup in a nearly $6.5 billion all-stock deal, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he wants AI devices to create 'an embarrassment of riches.' OpenAI is officially getting into the hardware business. In a video posted to X on Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and former Apple designer Jony Ive, who worked on flagship products like the iPhone, revealed a partnership to create the next generation of AI-enabled devices. Also: I tried Google's XR glasses and they already beat my Meta Ray-Bans in 3 ways The AI software company announced it is merging with io, an under-the-radar startup focused on AI devices that Ive founded a year ago alongside several partners. In the video, Altman and Ive say they have been "quietly" collaborating for two years. As part of the deal, Ive and those at his design firm, LoveFrom, will remain independent but will take on creative roles at OpenAI. Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET's parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems. "The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower, and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering, and product teams in San Francisco," OpenAI wrote in an accompanying blog post about the merger. The post did not offer many more details. "I want this to be democratized, I want everyone to have it," Altman says in the video, referring to the hardware OpenAI aims to build under the new partnership. Earlier this month, OpenAI moved to become a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), announcing the shift with similar language about making AI accessible to as many people as possible and focused on social betterment goals. Historically, technology of that caliber takes a while to become truly accessible and intuitive for large groups of people to use, and current AI devices like the iPhone 16 require specific, expensive hardware to run. Emphasizing how scientists use OpenAI models to accelerate breakthroughs, Altman added in the video that he hopes forthcoming AI hardware opens up an "embarrassment of riches of what people go create for collective society." The merger follows several hints from earlier this year signaling OpenAI's interest in hardware like wearables and robotics. With most major hardware providers launching AI-powered smartphones (despite a few drawbacks), laptops, and other tech, the space is moving quickly. On the more experimental end of that spectrum, AI devices like Humane Pin and Rabbit R1 haven't exactly succeeded, though health wearables that make use of AI for big-picture insights are taking off. Also: The five coolest gadgets announced at Computex 2025 (and they're actually affordable) It's unclear what hardware category OpenAI will target first. The video notes that the two companies won't release anything until likely next year, though Altman vaguely mentions a prototype of an initial product in the video that he says is "the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen." According to the Wall Street Journal, Altman and Ive have discussed camera devices and headphones as possible products, but nothing is confirmed yet.

OpenAI Wants to (Eventually) Sell You a Jony Ive-Designed AI Gadget

The ChatGPT maker is spending an estimated $6.5 billion to acquire the former Apple design chief's startup, dubbed io, and Sam Altman has grand plans to reinvent the computer. Can OpenAI reinvent the computer? The company behind ChatGPT is laying the groundwork to do just that with the help of iPhone designer Jony Ive. On Wednesday, San Francisco-based OpenAI revealed it's acquiring a startup, called "io," that Ive secretly created a year ago to develop next-generation hardware to fully harness AI. "I think we have the opportunity here to completely reimagine what it means to use a computer," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a video hyping up the announcement. Unfortunately, no prototypes were shown. But in the clip, Altman said io's goal is to "create a family of devices" to better use AI. "The first one we've been working on...has just completely captured our imagination," Ive said. Altman has been testing the prototype at home and says: "I've been able to live with it and I think it's the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen." As for why io was created, Altman and Ive explained in a blog post that one problem facing generative AI is that it "remains shaped by traditional products and interfaces." Ive and Altman began collaborating about two years ago, leading them to conclude "that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company." So, a year ago, Ive founded io with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tang Tan, all of whom are former Apple design chiefs. According to the blog post, io has attracted other top hardware and software engineers, along with "the best technologists, physicists, scientists, researchers and experts in product development and manufacturing." The New York Times reports that OpenAI is paying $6.5 billion for the startup. In addition, Ive and his design firm LoveFrom "will assume design and creative responsibilities across OpenAl and io," the video clip says. OpenAI says it'll share more next year. But the company won't be the first to try and develop a hardware product that revolves around generative AI. The startup Humane, also the brainchild of former Apple employees, developed a Star Trek-like pin around AI. But the $699 product flopped and its assets were sold to HP.

OpenAI to buy Jony Ive's io Products for $6.5bn

Michael Acton, Cristina Criddle and George Hammond in San Francisco OpenAI is set to acquire former Apple design chief Jony Ive's hardware start-up io Products for about $6.5bn, according to people familiar with the matter. Sam Altman's AI venture is one of a number of companies betting on alternatives to the smartphone as the predominant device to access AI. Ive, the designer behind many of Apple's best-known products, left the company in 2019 after almost three decades. During that time, he formed a close relationship with co-founder Steve Jobs and oversaw the rollout of the iPod, iPhone, MacBook and Apple Watch. OpenAI has a high-profile partnership with Apple, which integrated ChatGPT into its voice assistant and writing tools in December as part of an artificial intelligence overhaul of its products dubbed "Apple Intelligence".

Will the Jony Ive-Sam Altman show challenge Apple?

The reverberations that ChatGPT sent through one of Silicon Valley's most powerful technology empires say a lot about the nature of disruption in the tech industry. Google had seen off any number of would-be search engine rivals over the years, but here was something different and potentially much more threatening: an entirely new way to ask for information. It is tempting to see this week's attempt by OpenAI to plant its flag in the consumer hardware business as a similar challenge to another tech empire: Apple. As he announced the purchase of io, a tech hardware start-up co-founded by Jony Ive, along with an alliance with the former Apple design guru, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman explicitly forecast an end to the era of smartphone dominance. Today's "legacy" consumer gadgets, he said, were not well suited to a future shaped by AI. Apple's own struggles with artificial intelligence lend additional power to this narrative. In one of its most damaging setbacks in years, it has failed to come up with a set of AI features that it promised would transform the way people complete tasks on the iPhone. Rounding out the story is Ive's personal narrative, which has been front and centre in the way his alliance with OpenAI has been presented. He has shown regret for some of the negative effects of the iPhone, like smartphone addiction. What better way to atone than to come up with a new set of gadgets that are more conducive to human flourishing? All of this makes for an attractive David vs Goliath story. But there are good reasons to question whether OpenAI's news this week represents a turning point for consumer hardware. Start with the fact that its $6.5bn purchase of Ive's start-up does not even involve the hiring of the former Apple designer himself. The other three founders, all from Apple, are part of a 55-person team that will be joining OpenAI, at the staggering cost of nearly $120mn a head. Ive himself will be a consultant along with his personal design firm, LoveFrom. OpenAI watchers may wonder what is new here: Altman has talked before about his close relationship with Ive and how the two were working on breakthrough ideas for AI-centric gadgets. The impact that io's small team is likely to have inside the AI company is a second reason for scepticism. On its own, this is unlikely to kick-start a design and hardware division capable of challenging the industry's best. Apple's innovations have come from deep investments in both the many component technologies involved, as well as the advanced manufacturing techniques needed to package these into must-have devices. Equally important was the culture Steve Jobs built in the years leading up to the iPhone, with hardware design at the centre. Grafted on to an AI research lab that is transforming itself rapidly into a consumer tech giant, the new hardware group at OpenAI starts from a very different position. The biggest reason to question whether OpenAI is about to disrupt Apple in hardware, though, is the nature of artificial intelligence itself. Unlike previous generations of technology, it may simply not lend itself to a breakout device. Compare the anticipation around AI now with the expectations that built up around mobile computing in the years before the launch of the iPhone. There was a widespread belief at the time that the industry was only one breakthrough away from putting the internet into people's pockets. It just was not clear what that breakthrough would be -- until the moment in 2007 when Jobs held up the first iPhone. A similar expectation has been building around the hunt for a post-smartphone computing platform, with AI a key enabling technology. However, there is unlikely to be an "'iPhone moment" for AI hardware. To be effective, artificial intelligence needs to be everywhere and nowhere. It needs to be in every device, enhancing every type of digital experience. But it also needs to retreat into the background, anticipating and completing tasks behind the scenes. This suggests there will not be one single hardware form-factor capable of turning AI into a hit consumer product. Instead, the technology looks set to give a lift to a range of new markets, from smart glasses to inconspicuous "wearables", while also adding extra value to the gadgets people already use most in their lives. The biggest opportunity for OpenAI lies in using its AI to animate all of these devices.

OpenAI buys Jony Ive's design startup for $6.5 billion

OpenAI is buying Jony Ive's startup, io, for $6.5 billion, as first reported by The New York Times. The company confirmed the news in a blog post on its website headlined by the photo you see above, which is apparently real and not AI generated. As part of the deal, Ive and his design studio, LoveForm, will continue to work independently of OpenAI. However, Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan, who co-founded io with Ive, will become OpenAI employees, alongside about 50 other engineers, designers and researchers. In collaboration with OpenAI's existing teams, they'll work on hardware that allows people to interact with OpenAI's technologies. OpenAI has not disclosed whether the deal would be paid for in cash or stock. Per the Wall Street Journal, it's an all-equity deal. Open AI has yet to turn a profit. Moreover, according to reporting from The Information, OpenAI agreed to share 20 percent of its revenue with Microsoft until 2030 in return for the more than $13 billion the tech giant has invested into it. When asked about how it would finance the acquisition, Altman told The Times the press worries about OpenAI's funding and revenue more than the company itself. "We'll be fine," he said. "Thanks for the concern." The deal is still subject to regulatory approval. In an interview with The Times, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Ive, best known for his design work on the iPhone, said the goal of the partnership is to create "amazing products that elevate humanity." Before today, Altman was an investor in Humane, the startup behind the failed Humane AI Pin. HP bought the company earlier this year for $116 million, far less than the $1 billion Humane had reportedly sought before the sale. "The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco," OpenAI writes of the acquisition on its website. "As io merges with OpenAI, Jony and LoveFrom will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io." According to The Times, OpenAI already had a 23 percent stake in io following an agreement the two companies made at the end of 2024. OpenAI is now paying approximately $5 billion to take full control of the startup. Just what form whatever devices come out partnership will look like is unclear. The description for the YouTube video you see above says, "Building a family of AI products for everyone." Whatever comes out of the acquisition could take years to hit the market, and some of the Ive and his team do may never see the light of day.

Why OpenAI's deal with iPhone designer Jony Ive should be a wake up call for Apple

He became a touchstone in Silicon Valley for great hardware because of his role in the creation of the iPhone and Apple Watch. On Wednesday, Ive returned to the computer industry with a new video, but it wasn't launching a new Apple product. Instead, Ive announced a $6.4 billion deal that will merge his nascent hardware firm, called io, with OpenAI. Ive will head up the design for a new series of AI hardware products. The announcement underscores the growing sense in Silicon Valley that smart artificial intelligence assistants could upend the gadget world, displacing the laptops and smartphones that Apple currently builds with new products that look and function totally differently. "Tech shifts like the internet, the smartphone, and AI only happen once in a generation. OpenAI is catalyzing this shift into something tangible," longtime Apple analyst Gene Munster posted on X on Wednesday. Even Apple executives have said that AI hardware could threaten its iPhone business. Eddy Cue, Apple's chief of services, said in court earlier this month that he believes AI devices could replace the iPhone within 10 years, "crazy as that sounds," he said. "AI is a new technology shift, and it's creating new opportunities for new entrants," Cue said. Meanwhile, Apple's big improvement to its built-in assistant, Siri, was delayed earlier this year. One of the core features of Apple Intelligence, the company's suite of AI features, was the integration with OpenAI for ChatGPT to handle the queries that Apple Intelligence couldn't. And Siri still functions like a question-and-answer system, instead of a fluent conversationalist, like ChatGPT or Google's Gemini. Apple's next opportunity to show off what it's been working on is on June 9 at its annual WWDC conference in Cupertino. It's where Apple first revealed Apple Intelligence last year, and where it typically announces its latest software for iPhones, iPads, and Macs. OpenAI's announcement was light on details about what kinds of products the new OpenAI hardware workforce will design and build. The company says that it will show off what it's working on next year.

Steve Jobs once called designer Jony Ive his 'spiritual partner' at Apple -- OpenAI just bought his tech startup for $6.4 billion

Jony Ive presents the Fashion Icon award on stage during The Fashion Awards 2019 held at Royal Albert Hall in London, England. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called Jony Ive "the greatest designer in the world" on Wednesday after announcing his company's plan to buy Ive's artificial intelligence device startup io, in a deal worth $6.4 billion. The deal signals OpenAI's intention to build consumer devices, likely meant to get more people using its AI services regularly. Altman and Ive have stayed mum on the specific products they're planning to roll out, and when, but their partnership shows that OpenAI is taking a big swing: Steve Jobs once described Ive as his "spiritual partner at Apple" and a "wickedly intelligent person in all ways," according to Walter Isaacson's 2011 biography of the Apple co-founder. Ive, 58, served as Apple's chief design officer until 2019 and spent nearly three decades designing some of the tech giant's most iconic pieces of hardware, from the iMac and MacBook to the iPhone, iPod and iPad. Born in London, he joined Apple in 1992, five years before Jobs returned as CEO to the company he co-founded. Jobs quickly found a kindred spirit in Ive, later telling Isaacson that the pair typically conceived most of Apple's new products together, before pulling in other collaborators: "[Ive] understands business concepts, marketing concepts ... He gets the big picture as well as the most infinitesimal details about each product." DON'T MISS: 8 online classes to boost your confidence and pay -- 30% off Memorial Day sale When Jobs died in 2011, Ive delivered his eulogy, calling his former boss his "closest and most loyal friend." Ive's first collaboration with Jobs came on the colorful line of iMac personal computers released in 1998, for which the designer created striking features like a translucent plastic case and a handle on the back of the computer. Later, Ive's focus shifted toward making products like the iPod and iPhone sleek, stylish and easy to use. Ive also led the design of the Apple Watch and Apple's AirPod earbuds. "The difference that Jony has made, not only at Apple but in the world, is huge," Jobs told Isaacson. When Ive left Apple in 2019 to launch his own independent design firm, LoveFrom, analysts at Deutsche Bank told CNBC that the tech company was losing "one of [its] most important people."

OpenAI is buying iPhone designer Jony Ive's AI devices startup for $6.4 billion

OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman appears on screen during a talk with Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella at the Microsoft Build 2025, conference in Seattle, Washington on May 19, 2025. OpenAI said on Wednesday that it's buying Jony Ive's AI devices startup io for $6.4 billion in an all-equity deal that includes its current stake in the company. Ive is taking on "deep creative and design responsibilities across OpenAI and io," OpenAI said in a statement. The company said that io is merging with OpenAI, while Ive and his "creative collective" called LoveFrom will stay independent. The news comes as OpenAI is rushing to stay ahead in the generative AI race, where competitors including Google, Anthropic and Elon Musk's xAI are investing heavily and regularly rolling out new products. And part of staying ahead in that race includes shoring up its hardware operations. OpenAI is backed by Microsoft and was recently valued at $300 billion in a funding round led by SoftBank.

OpenAI recruits legendary iPhone designer Jony Ive to work on AI hardware in $6.5B deal

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- OpenAI has recruited Jony Ive, the designer behind Apple's iPhone, to lead a new hardware project for the artificial intelligence company that makes ChatGPT. OpenAI said it is acquiring io, a product and engineering company co-founded by Ive, in a deal valued at nearly $6.5 billion. OpenAI said its CEO Sam Altman had been "quietly" collaborating since 2023 with Ive and his design firm, LoveFrom. Ive worked at Apple for over two decades and is known for his work on iconic iPhone, iMac and iPad designs. Ive was Apple's chief design officer before leaving the company in 2019 to start his own design firm. In a joint letter posted on OpenAI's website Wednesday, Ive and Altman said it "became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company." That's when Ive co-founded io with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan. OpenAI said Ive will not become an OpenAI employee and his design collective, LoveFrom, will remain independent but "will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io." Both OpenAI and Ive's design firm are based in San Francisco. -- -- -- The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP's text archives.

OpenAI Unites With Jony Ive in $6.5 Billion Deal to Create A.I. Devices

The rise of artificial intelligence has profoundly altered the technology world in recent years, upending how software is created, how people search for information, and how images and videos can be generated -- all with a few prompts to a chatbot. What the technology has yet to do, though, is find a preferred form in a physical, everyday gadget. A.I. largely remains the domain of an app on phones, despite efforts by start-ups and others to move it into devices. Now OpenAI, the world's leading A.I. lab, is taking a crack at that riddle. On Wednesday, Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief executive, said the company was paying $6.5 billion to buy io, a one-year-old start-up created by Jony Ive, a former top Apple executive who designed the iPhone. The deal, which effectively unites Silicon Valley royalty, is intended to usher in what the two men call "a new family of products" for the age of artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., which is shorthand for a future technology that achieves human-level intelligence. The deal, which is OpenAI's biggest acquisition, will bring in Mr. Ive and his team of roughly 55 engineers, designers and researchers. They will assume creative and design responsibilities across OpenAI and build hardware that helps people better interact with the technology. In a joint interview, Mr. Ive and Mr. Altman declined to say what such devices could look like and how they might work, but they said they hoped to share details next year. Mr. Ive, 58, framed the ambitions as galactic, with the aim of creating "amazing products that elevate humanity." "We've been waiting for the next big thing for 20 years," Mr. Altman, 40, added. "We want to bring people something beyond the legacy products we've been using for so long." Mr. Altman and Mr. Ive are effectively looking beyond an era of smartphones, which have been people's signature personal device since the iPhone debuted in 2007. If the two men succeed -- and it is a very big if -- they could spur what is known as "ambient computing." Rather than typing and taking photographs on smartphones, future devices like pendants or glasses that use A.I. could process the world in real-time, fielding questions and analyzing images and sounds in seamless ways. Mr. Altman had invested in Humane, a company that pursued this kind of vision with the creation of an A.I. pin. But the start-up folded not long after its product flopped. In their interview, Mr. Ive expressed some misgivings with the iPhone and said that had motivated him to team up with Mr. Altman. "I shoulder a lot of the responsibility for what these things have brought us," he said, referring to the anxiety and distractions that come with being constantly connected to the computer in your pocket. Mr. Altman echoed the sentiment. "I don't feel good about my relationship with technology right now," he said. "It feels a lot like being jostled on a crowded street in New York, or being bombarded with notifications and flashing lights in Las Vegas." He said the goal was to leverage A.I. to help people make some sense of the noise. As part of the deal, Mr. Ive and his design studio, LoveFrom, will remain independent and continue to work on projects separate from OpenAI. Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan, who also founded io with Mr. Ive, will become OpenAI's employees and report to Peter Welinder, a vice president of product, who will oversee the io division. The acquisition is a significant windfall for Mr. Ive. OpenAI and LoveFrom declined to disclose financial specifics, including whether the $6.5 billion deal would be paid in cash or stock. The deal is subject to regulatory approval. OpenAI already owned a 23 percent stake in io as part of an agreement between the two companies at the end of last year, two people with knowledge of the deal said, so it is now paying around $5 billion to fully acquire the start-up. OpenAI separately has a Start-up Fund that invested in Mr. Ive's start-up last year, the people said. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, for copyright infringement regarding news content related to A.I. systems. OpenAI and Microsoft have denied the claims.) OpenAI set off the A.I. boom in late 2022 when it released the ChatGPT chatbot. In March, the start-up completed a $40 billion funding that valued it at $300 billion, making it one of the world's most valuable private companies. The fund-raising round was led by the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank. As it has grown, OpenAI has struggled to adopt a new corporate structure. Founded in 2015 as a nonprofit organization, the A.I. lab has been trying to reinvent itself as a for-profit company so it can more easily raise money from investors. If it does not restructure by the end of the year, SoftBank could halve its investment in the company. That makes the billions that OpenAI is paying for Mr. Ive's start-up a steep outlay, especially as the start-up is also unprofitable. Building the technology that powers ChatGPT and other services is enormously expensive, and OpenAI is under pressure to raise revenues. OpenAI expects about $3.7 billion in sales this year and about $11.6 billion next year, according to financial documents reviewed by The Times. The company is also in talks to acquire Windsurf, an A.I.-powered programming tool, for about $3 billion. Asked how OpenAI would find the money to buy io, Mr. Altman said the press worried about OpenAI's funding and revenues more than the company did. "We'll be fine," he said. "Thanks for the concern." The deal came together after Mr. Ive, a protégé of Apple's founder, Steve Jobs, who designed the iPod and many other products, became intrigued by A.I. He felt somewhat lost after leaving Apple in 2019, he said, and was eager to find his next act. Two years ago, Charlie Ive, one of his 21-year-old twin sons, told him about ChatGPT, Mr. Ive said. Curious about his son's excitement over the chatbot, Mr. Ive connected with Mr. Altman. They became friends. Mr. Ive said he was so enamored with the technology that he founded io last year with several peers to conceptualize new hardware products suited to A.I. By early this year, it became clear that he and Mr. Altman wanted to form a partnership to work on a new generation of devices, he said. Mr. Ive said the partnership was not being led by a fiscal imperative but from a place of building products that "benefit humanity." "I believe everything I've done in my career was leading to this," he said. Tripp Mickle contributed reporting.

Apple designer Sir Jony Ive joins OpenAI

Legendary British designer Sir Jony Ive, who helped create the Apple iPhone, is joining forces with OpenAI, as the artificial intelligence (AI) firm sets its sights on developing hardware. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, will buy a start-up founded by Sir Jony, who will "assume deep design and creative responsibilities" across the company, the two firms said in an announcement. Open AI boss Sam Altman said the goal was to create a "family of devices" made specifically with AI in mind. The deal comes as the tech industry has been looking for its next hardware hit after the iPhone and takes particular aim at Apple, which some say has been moving too slowly to incorporate AI into its devices.

OpenAI's Ambitions Just Became Crystal Clear

But when you promise the world a revolutionary new product, it helps to have actually built one. Sam Altman is done with keyboards and screens. All that swiping and typing and scrolling -- too much potential friction between you and ChatGPT. Earlier today, OpenAI announced its intentions to solve this apparent problem. The company is partnering with Jony Ive, the longtime head of design at Apple, who did pioneering work on products such as the iMac G3, the iPod, and, most famously, the iPhone. Together, Altman and Ive say they want to create hardware built specifically for AI software. Everyone, Altman suggested in a highly produced announcement video, could soon have access to a "team of geniuses" -- presumably, ChatGPT-style assistants -- on a "family of devices." Such technology "deserves something much better" than today's laptops, he argued. What that will look like, exactly, he didn't say, and OpenAI declined my request for comment. But the firm will pay roughly $5 billion to acquire Io, Ive's start-up, to figure that "something much better" out as Ive takes on "deep design and creative responsibilities" across OpenAI. (Emerson Collective, the majority owner of The Atlantic, is an investor in both Io and OpenAI. And OpenAI entered a corporate partnership with The Atlantic last year.) Read: The great AI lock-in has begun Moving into hardware could become OpenAI's most technologically disruptive, and financially lucrative, expansion to date. AI assistants are supposed to help with everything, so it's only natural to try to replace the phones and computers that people do everything on. If the company is successful, within a decade you might be reading (or listening to) a ChatGPT-generated news roundup on an OpenAI device instead of reading an article on your iPhone, or asking the device to file your taxes instead of logging in to TurboTax. In Altman's view, current devices offer only clunky ways to use AI products: You have to open an app or a website, upload the relevant information, continually prompt the AI bot, and then transfer any useful outputs elsewhere. In the promotional video, Ive agrees, suggesting that the era of personal computers and smartphones -- a period that he helped define -- needs a refresh: "It's just common sense to at least think, surely, there's something beyond these legacy products," he tells Altman. Although OpenAI and Io have not specified what they are building, a number of wearable AI pins, smartglasses, and other devices announced over the past year have suggested a vision of an AI assistant always attached to your body -- an "external brain," as Altman called it today. These products have, so far, uniformly flopped. As just one example, Humane, the maker of a $700 AI "pin" that attached to a user's clothing, shut down the poorly reviewed product less than a year after launch. Ive, in an interview today with Bloomberg, called these early AI gadgets "very poor products." And Apple and OpenAI have had their own share of uninspiring, or even embarrassing, product releases. Still, if any pair has a shot at designing a legitimately useful AI device, it is likely the man who unleashed ChatGPT partnering with someone who led the design of the Apple smartphones, tablets, and laptops that have defined decades of American life and technology. Certainly, a bespoke device would also rapidly accelerate OpenAI's commercial ambitions. The company, once a small research lab, is now valued at $300 billion and growing rapidly, and in March reported that half a billion people use ChatGPT each week. Already, OpenAI is angling to replace every major tech firm: ChatGPT is an internet search tool as powerful as Google, can help you shop online and remove the need to type into Amazon, can be your work software instead of the Microsoft Office suite. OpenAI is even reportedly building a social-media platform. For now, OpenAI relies on the smartphones and web browsers people use to access ChatGPT -- products that are all made by business rivals. Altman is trying to cut out the middleman and condense digital life into a single, unified piece of hardware and software. The promise is this: Your whole life could be lived through such a device, turning OpenAI's products into a repository of uses and personal data that could be impossible to leave -- just as, if everyone in your family has an iPhone, Macbook, and iCloud storage plan, switching to Android is deeply unpleasant and challenging. Read: "We're definitely going to build a bunker before we release AGI" Several other major tech firms are also trying to integrate generative AI into their legacy devices and software. Amazon has incorporated generative AI into the Alexa voice assistant, Google into its Android phones and search bar, and Apple into the iPhone. Meta has built an AI assistant into its apps and sells smartglasses. Products and platforms which disrupted work, social life, education, and more in the early 2000s are showing their age: Google has become crowded with search-optimized sites and AI-generated content that can make it harder for users to find good information; Amazon is filled with junk; Facebook is a cesspool; and the smartphone is commonly viewed as attention-sapping, if not outright brain-melting. Tech behemoths are jury-rigging AI features into their products to avoid being disrupted -- but these rollouts, and Apple's in particular, have been disastrous, giving dangerous health advice, butchering news summaries, and generally crowding and slowing user experiences. Almost 20 years ago, when Apple introduced the iPhone, Steve Jobs said in a now-famous speech that "every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything." Seeming to be in pursuit of similar magic, today's video announcing OpenAI's foray into hardware began with Altman saying, "I think we have the opportunity here to kind of completely reimagine what it means to use a computer." But Jobs had an actual product to share and sell. Altman, for now, is marketing his imagination.

Sam Altman and Jony Ive Will Force A.I. Into Your Life

Last Wednesday, OpenAI announced that it was acquiring a company called io, an artificial-intelligence-forward product-development firm co-founded, last year, by Jony Ive, the vastly influential designer known for his work with Steve Jobs at Apple. Ive led the designs of the original iMac, the iPad, and the Apple Watch, among other era-defining products. Then, in 2019, he left Apple to start his own design firm called LoveFrom. The news of his move to OpenAI felt something like learning that LeBron James was joining the Miami Heat: Ive had become synonymous with Apple's success, perhaps second only to Jobs. Now, after a period of independence, he was choosing a new team. The announcement of the deal with OpenAI -- for a reported $6.5 billion in OpenAI equity -- came via a press release, featuring a rather cuddly portrait of Ive with OpenAI's C.E.O. and co-founder, Sam Altman (shot by the British fashion photographer Craig McDean) and a faux-casual videotaped interview session between the two at San Francisco's Cafe Zoetrope. In it, Altman describes "a family of devices that would let people use A.I. to create all sorts of wonderful things," enabled by "magic intelligence in the cloud." The symbolism of the partnership was clear: Altman is the new Jobs, and together he and Ive promise to create the next ur-device, a personal technology that will reshape our lives just as the iPhone did. Once it's ready, they say, they'll ship a hundred million devices "faster than any company" ever has. We don't know what it will look like just yet, but Altman swears that it will be "the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen." Ming-chi Kuo, a respected analyst of Apple's Chinese manufacturing, posted on X that the product is planned to be "as compact and elegant as an iPod Shuffle" and that it will have "cameras and microphones for environmental detection." It might resemble other early A.I. devices announced or launched in the past year, such as Friend, another pendant-like chatbot companion; Humane, an A.I. pin with a laser projector; or Rabbit, a small handheld gadget. Yet the functionality of these nascent inventions is severely limited. "Vaporware" is a term of art from the nineteen-eighties that was popularized in the early internet era, referring to new software or technology that overpromises and underdelivers -- if the product is even released in the first place. However many breathless headlines about OpenAI's acquisition, it's just vaporware until Altman and Ive prove otherwise. Hype, after all, is one of OpenAI's primary achievements -- despite predictions about ChatGPT changing the world, the company is losing billions of dollars a year. What we can do, in the meantime, is imagine what an iPhone of A.I. might look like based on the A.I. technology that so far exists. Generative A.I. has already been integrated into many of our daily digital experiences, whether we want it there or not. iPhones now summarize text threads using A.I. and allow users to generate custom emojis. Google recently announced an "AI Mode" that it intends to supplant its traditional search box with, a development that threatens to slow open-web traffic down to a trickle. Meta's "AI Glasses," a collaboration with Ray-Ban, integrate voice chatting and live translation with the company's A.I. assistant. And chatbots with distinct personalities, like Replika and Character.ai, are becoming increasingly popular as they get better at mimicking human connection. Perhaps Altman and Ive's machine will mingle all of these functionalities: it might listen to and interpret the sounds around you; it might respond with predictive text, delivered to you instantaneously and in a customizable tone; and it might become your main avenue for accessing information, like a personal concierge. It will reportedly not attempt to supplant the other technologies you depend on: according to the Wall Street Journal, Altman described it as a kind of third device, meant to work within an ecosystem that includes your laptop and smartphone. But it will effectively be a self-surveillance machine that creates a technological scrim for your personal reality. The involvement of Ive invites inevitable comparisons with the iPhone, but this is not necessarily a compliment; to many of us, an iPhone of A.I. sounds less like a utopian promise than like a threat that A.I. will soon become ubiquitous and unavoidable. Smartphones have already absorbed us in our screens, creating personalized information bubbles; omnipresent A.I. will only intensify that atomization while being more automated, more inscrutable, and more inescapable. The video claims that more information about the new product will be shared next year, which would mean that we're currently in the Palm Pilot stage of A.I. -- with the iPhone-like invention looming around the corner, poised to obliterate the competition. But there are vast logistical hurdles to achieving this optimistic timeline for ubiquitous consumer A.I. More than a billion people in the world own iPhones. Some research estimates that generating a typical e-mail using A.I. consumes a bottle's worth of water to siphon heat away from the data centers' servers to separate cooling towers. This means that, if we all started using our personal A.I. machines dozens of times a day, as we do our iPhones, the environmental toll of our personal technology would skyrocket -- imagine something like turning every car on the road into a diesel truck. This, in turn, would warp the direction of global economies, requiring the construction of ever-larger data centers. The economic and environmental overhaul would be done in the name of outsourcing our human thoughts and memories to an omnipresent machine resting in our pockets or hanging around our necks. Altman and Ive are positioning their device as a solution to screen fatigue. They promise that their gadget will free us from technology, as evinced by their softly smiling faces in their joint portrait and the warmth and companionship of the café in which they conducted their video interview. But we will only get to this appealingly humane place, they imply, by adopting more technology -- their technology. Speculative mockups online imagine an A.I. companion device that looks simple, like a rounded metal amulet -- it would be Ive's style to make the design approachable yet austere. Yet the sleek and frictionless object will rely on a vast infrastructure of factories and server farms; the labor of human maintenance workers and moderators; and, ultimately, the corpus of information that has been digested as training data, which is effectively the entire history of human thought. The little pendants around our necks will be a hundred million Trojan horses, smuggling A.I. into every aspect of our lives. The comforting tone of Altman and Ive's pitch belies the enormous uncertainty of what their plan would unleash. A recent study in the United Kingdom found that forty-six per cent of youth ages sixteen to twenty-one would prefer to live in a world in which the internet doesn't exist. Given all the regret and dread that digital culture has prompted, some two decades since the advent of social media, it seems worth thinking twice before allowing Altman and Ive's incipient creation to occupy our time and our minds, too. ♦

Sam Altman and Jony Ive Will Kill AI Gadgets Long Before They Kill the iPhone

There's a lot more at stake for AI hardware than there is phones. It is, once again, a big moment for AI gadgets. This week, in the midst of a flood of news from Google's I/O, Apple legend Jony Ive, who helped actualize a niche little gadget called the iPhone, announced he's buddying up with AI boy genius Sam Altman, whoâ€"in case you've been living in a Ted Kaczynski-style cabin for the past few yearsâ€"is the face of a similarly teensy little product called ChatGPT. In a reported $6.5 billion deal, OpenAI is planning to buy Ive and his team and put everyone under a new umbrella called io (no connection with Google I/O). As I wrote previously, what exactly the two are cooking up is still TBD, but we do know a few things for damn sure. First, this is hardware we're talking about, meaning a real, tangible product you can hold in your hand or (if rumors are to be trusted) put on your desk and/or slide in your pocket. Second, it will have *drum roll, everyone* AI. To no one's surprise, AI will be the centerpiece of Altman and Ive's collaboration. What that AI will do, again, is anyone's guess, but apparently it'll be useful enough to sell tens of millions of gadgetsâ€"or at least that's what they hope. Those are the cold, hard facts we can count on right now. And though there is no consumer-ready product to speak of yetâ€"at least as far as we knowâ€"the aspirations are likely high for Altman and Ive's creation. That's especially clear if you've been reading between the lines. While neither of them has said as much officially, whatever Altman and Ive create by way of io will have our favorite device in its sightsâ€"the phone. This month, in an interview with Stripe, Ive went as far as to say that the two's product is a response to the "unintended consequences" of the iPhone. That's not saying they're trying to take down the phone explicitly, but it's not, not saying it, either. That tacit goal of killing or unraveling the smartphone may be present in other aspects of the mystery gadget as well. According to reports from the Wall Street Journal, the device will be "unobtrusive," which could mean a lot of things, but most likely means it will not have a screen. According to tech insider and supply chain sleuth Ming-Chi Kuo, the screenless nature of this mystery device is confirmed by "industry research." So now, the picture we have is a screenless AI device that probably has intentions of unseating the iPhone. If that statement is giving you déjà vu, then you're not aloneâ€"this is starting to feel an awful lot like Humane's Ai Pin, which, as we know, did not exactly work out the way its creators intended. Just ask HP, which recently bought Humane for pennies to strip the company for spare parts. And while Humane's Ai Pin will likely be different than whatever io has in store (Ive has said he's not particularly interested in a wearable in the traditional sense), it's still, at the end of the day, just like Humane's Ai Pin; an AI-centric gadget with no screen that wants to unseat the iPhone. In that way, whatever Altman and Ive do will be compared to the Ai Pin and, for better or for worse, will shape our current and future perception of AI gadgets in general. In fact, I would argue that this moment, over the ascension of Humane's Ai Pin and Rabbit's R1, is far more important than both of those combined. Think about it: while Humane's Ai Pin was eagerly anticipated for being the first flagship AI device and because of its lofty ambitions of changing the way we interact with our phones, the ultimate letdown of the Ai Pin wasn't exactly a huge shock. With all due respect to Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, the braintrust of Humane, they're not quite as high-profile as Altman and Ive. The shadow cast by Altman and Ive is orders of magnitude higher, and as a result, so are the expectations for whatever the two deliver. That's a strength on one hand, since a lot more people might be interested in buying whatever io releases, but it's also a liabilityâ€"less so for Altman and Ive, who will be fine no matter what, but more so for the longevity of AI gadgets. At the risk of being dramatic, if Altman and Ive (and all of the resources their names can summon) can't make AI hardware click, then who on this green Earth is going to make it happen? So, I repeat how I started this whole thought: it is once again a big moment for AI gadgets. But maybe that statement doesn't really cut it. Let me amend: it is now a make-or-break moment for AI gadgets. The great part is that either way, if Altman and Ive succeed where Humane and Rabbit failed or if they flop harder than, I don't know, Google Glass, it doesn't matter much. At the end of the day, you'll still have your glass slab and all that it entails, and with that in your hand, you'll be too distracted to really notice.

Jony Ive and Sam Altman, Sitting in a Tree, 'K-I-L-L-I-N-G' the Smartphone

Ive and fellow iPhone vets will have a say on ChatGPT development, though they still won’t tell us what the hell they’re making. OpenAI declared it will put up an astronomical $6.5 billion to merge with Jony Ive and his secretive AI device design company. Ive, who helped bring us legendary products like the iMac and iPhone, will lead the makers of ChatGPT not just in making a better chatbot but in creating a product that “reimagines†a personal computer. Perhaps Ive and Silicon Valley darling OpenAI CEO Sam Altman may finally help us escape our screen addiction, or it could just be another Humane pin. Altman and Ive came together in a massive media blitz to announce their new match made in heaven. Ive’s company, LoveFrom, alongside other big names in tech design spaces, including former lead iPhone designer Tang Tan, was already working with Altman on this device. Now, the engagement is official. Ive and fellow Apple vets will now be heavily involved in all aspects of OpenAI’s software and hardware development. While LoveFrom is partnered with OpenAI on this project as an independent company, those at Ive’s separate company, “io,†will work hand-in-hand with the makers of ChatGPT to bring forth “a family of products†designed for our current age of AI. In an announcement video posted to X, Altman said this merger was “formed with the mission of figuring out how to create a family of devices that would let people use AI to create all sorts of wonderful things.†For his part, Ive mentioned that the world is still fixated on a device whose design hasn’t radically changed for well over a decade. Ive still hasn’t offered an iota of what this supposed device looks like, what it does, or how it has, in his words, “captured our imagination.†It does exist, it is somehow portableâ€"as Altman said he has used an early prototypeâ€"but it will be kept under wraps until some unknown date. The Wall Street Journal reported, based on anonymous sources, that the makers of the still-unknown device want to “move consumers beyond screens.†OpenAI, under the new big tech chimera spearheaded by Ive and Altman, said this device may not replace smartphones, at least not initially, according to Bloomberg. In the meantime, Ive’s team will “take over†all other design space at OpenAI, including progressing development on ChatGPT. Perhaps these veteran designers can move the chatbot beyond its current iteration as a cheating tool used by students to keep themselves from learning. As for that unknown AI hardware, we can’t help but remind ourselves about last year’s deluge of AI wearables akin to the Humane AI Pin. That device included connectivity to a chatbot that could also handle light tasks like texts or emails on the behalf of users. The Ai Pin was inundated with problems and sold so poorly that Humane sold itself off to HP for a fraction of its initial $850 billion valuation. In the interview with Bloomberg, Ive said the Humane Ai Pin and fellow AI-centric doohickey, the Rabbit R1, were both “very poor products.†He further added, “there has been an absence of new ways of thinking expressed in products.†Without actual product details, prospective customers will just have to take his word for it. In a recent interview with Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, the man who worked alongside Steve Jobs to create the original iPhone aired his grievances with the screen-obsessed world he helped create. He called out social media as a societal ill, and maybe he can convince the company to quash its reported plans for a Twitter clone.

Our 5 Best Theories About OpenAI and Jony Ive's Mysterious AI Gadget

AI gadgets are back, baby! Or that's what Jony Ive and Sam Altman hope. Well, they may not really hope they're back as much as they hope they're not completely and utterly cooked. ICYMI, Ive and OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, announced in a post-Google I/O keynote bombshell that they are teaming up under a new company called, "io" to make, um... something? Whatever it is, it's apparently worth $6.5 billion of OpenAI's cold, hard AI revolution money. We truly, genuinely, do not know what the two are making together outside of the fact that it's going to be a piece of hardware (or potentially many), and it will be centered on AI (duh). But just because we can't answer the burning question of what this thing is yet doesn't mean we don't have some clues. For your speculative pleasure, I've gone ahead and aggregated the best hints we have so far, Pepe Silvia-style, to bring us at least one baby step closer to hazarding a guess. Here are the tastiest "phone-killing" AI gadget rumors we have so far. Lots of the best hints about what we can expect come from a Wall Street Journal report published on Wednesday. According to the report, Altman gave the OpenAI staff a preview of devices in the pipeline and offered a little insight into what they may be like. Two key elements, according to the WSJ report, are that the gadget will be "fully aware" of a user's "surroundings and life." That obviously doesn't offer a ton in terms of what shape the form factor will take, but it does point toward the ultimate product having sensorsâ€"a camera, microphone, maybe some sort of computer vision? Again, it's hard to say, but to be "aware," the AI device is going to need some of that stuff. And that's not just me guessing on that front... Another detail from WSJ is that the gadget will be "unobtrusive," which could refer, at least in part, to Ive's trademark minimalist aesthetic, but likely hints at a more key aspect of its designâ€"no screen. The screenless aspect seems to be corroborated by an inside scoop from Ming-Chi Kuo, a longtime technology analyst and credible tech rumor source. In a post on X, Kuo writes, "It will have cameras and microphones for environmental detection, with no display functionality." That's not surprising given that Ive has gone on record previously talking about how he doesn't exactly love what the iPhone has become since he helped pioneer it with Steve Jobs back in the day. Whether a screenless AI device can actually succeed where others like Humane's Ai Pin failed is a big question, but Ive and Altman seem to be willing to give the idea another go. One of the strangest details that hit me while sorting through the drip is how Altman is referring to the duo's hardware. According to WSJ, Altman referred to the device as a "companion." That could really mean anything, but to me, when I see "companion," my mind gravitates less to a wearable and more to... a robot? I'm not the only one looking in that direction, either. Altman has at least given some indication in the past that he wants to make a "really cute" computer, and this would seem to be a perfect opportunity to do just that. Another interesting bit from Kuo's "industry research" is that the device may ultimately not compute entirely on its own. Kuo writes that "it is expected to connect to smartphones and PCs, utilizing their computing and display capabilities." If you ask me, that's a bit of a cop-out in terms of being screenless and nowhere near as quirky as the Humane AI Pin's projection interface, but probably a smart idea in the long term for making something that's, uh, functional. There's a lot we can guess at with this nugget, but my brain skates to some kind of agentic AIâ€"think a connective "companion" that you carry around to do computer stuff for you. A thing that connects to the thing to make things less annoying! Sounds convoluted but potentially useful? One of the most confusing bits of messaging is on the wearable front. Making an AI wearable has proved difficult, if the Ai Pin is any indication, but according to Kuo, there could be a wearable aspect to it. "One of the intended use cases is wearing the device around the neck," writes Kuo. That seems to contradict some of the initial rumblings from the WSJ, however. According to the WSJ, the device will be "able to rest in one’s pocket or on one’s desk, and would be a third core device a person would put on their desk after a MacBook Pro and an iPhone." Pocket and desk? That doesn't really sound wearable-esque to me, but I guess the answer could be somewhere in between. There are already some AI devices out thereâ€"like this AI pendantâ€"that are intended to be worn around your neck, so the idea wouldn't be totally novel, but something tells me Ive and Altman are looking to iterate on existing form factors for AI gadgets. And wearables? So passé.

OpenAI Will Work on Hardware Products With Jony Ive

Jony Ive, the famous designer responsible for many of Apple's most well-known products, is teaming up with OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman. This new company will focus on hardware that incorporates AI. This partnership, which has led to the creation of a new company called "io," will bring AI even closer than before. The plan is to use OpenAI's artificial intelligence, especially ChatGPT, to help design and develop new kinds of hardware. While he doesn't get as much credit as Steve Jobs, Ive's career is defined by sleek, simple designs and easy-to-use products. During his many years at Apple, he led the design of popular devices like the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, each of which became incredibly popular in tech. Ive's minimalist style and focus on making technology intuitive have left a lasting mark not just on Apple but on the entire consumer electronics industry. Now, he's bringing that same style to AI by working OpenAI. According to Bloomberg, this deal cost OpenAI $6.5 billion. We don't know exactly what the hardware will bring, but it will likely be a lot more than just another run-of-the-mill competitor to an existing brand. The collaboration between LoveFrom, Ive's design firm, and OpenAI is a big deal. While the exact details are still under wraps, the goal is to create a new line of AI-powered devices. This isn't just about adding AI to existing gadgets. According to the lengthy video announcing the partnership, the goal is to design devices that blend AI capabilities to improve how people interact with technology. This could finally lead to the day when we have computers on our arms like in the Mass Effect video game series. However, I am pretty sure it will be something like glasses that will give you AR vision and answer your questions. Related ChatGPT's GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 Upgrades Are on the Way Hopefully, you won't need to think about which AI model you're using. Posts Ive was the design Chief for Apple when it was making its biggest products for the first time, and led these big projects. So if he can make what Jobs envisioned before these devices came to be, he'll likely be able to make what OpenAI wants from its hardware. The new company, "io," has brought together a talented team of engineers, researchers, and experts from different fields. Despite this, it is doubtful that this will lead to major innovation. A single AI-powered device appealing to everyone or meeting all user needs sounds a bit far-fetched. Still, Ive is probably the best candidate to do something like this. The key to all this will be making AI and hardware work together smoothly. While we can do that with our computers, a separate device won't have the luxury of a big, bulky case. However, if io can pull this off, it could set a new standard for how AI fits into our everyday lives. I am looking forward to hearing about what device is coming. Source: OpenAI

iPhone designer Jony Ive will join OpenAI to build AI-powered devices

Ive's design firm is already working on products for OpenAI, as the company seeks to become a major consumer brand. SAN FRANCISCO -- Jony Ive, designer of some of Apple's most popular products, will join ChatGPT maker OpenAI to help create products that make it easier to use artificial intelligence. Ive and OpenAI announced the partnership Wednesday in a video in which Ive, whose Apple designs include the iPhone, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that existing devices like laptops and smartphones don't make AI chatbots simple enough to use. "I am absolutely certain that we are on the brink of a new generation of technology," Ive said in the video. The partnership, which involves the merger of OpenAI and Ive's company, called IO, underlines how OpenAI aims to become a major consumer brand, in addition to providing the back-end technology for other businesses. That will intensify the company's competition with established tech giants including Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple, where Ive made his name through his close partnership with its co-founder Steve Jobs. Ive left Apple in 2019, after 30 years at the company. OpenAI has not indicated what products Ive will work on, but in the video released Wednesday, Altman hinted among them would be a new hardware device. "If I wanted to ask ChatGPT something right now," he said, while sitting in a San Francisco restaurant with Ive, "I would get out my laptop. ... I think this technology deserves something much better." OpenAI is not the only technology company trying to make chatbots and AI easier to access. Several of them have billions of existing users, while OpenAI is still a novelty for much of the world. ChatGPT has 400 million weekly users, the company has said. On Tuesday, Google unveiled smart glasses that can use the company's AI technology to translate a person's conversations between different languages in real-time, see directions projected onto the physical world and search the web for information about what the user is looking at. Apple is working to integrate AI into the iPhone and other products. Social media giant Meta is doubling down on AI tools, too. The Wall Street Journal reported the deal between Ive and OpenAI involves OpenAI buying IO for $6.5 billion worth of OpenAI stock. An OpenAI spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Ive and Altman said in their video that they had already been working on a new product, but did not describe it. "The first one I've been working on has just completely captured my imagination," Ive said. Altman made clear the scale of his product ambitions by adding, "I think it is the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen."

OpenAI enters hardware game with ex-Apple team and $6.5B bet

Sam Altman and Jony Ive discuss their collaboration to bring OpenAI into hardware. OpenAI has acquired the AI hardware startup io, founded by renowned designer Jony Ive, in a deal valued at $6.5 billion. The transaction marks OpenAI's largest acquisition to date and brings Ive's expertise in product design directly into the company's core operations. "This is an extraordinary moment. Computers are now seeing, thinking and understanding," OpenAI and Ive said in a joint statement. "Despite this unprecedented capability, our experience remains shaped by traditional products and interfaces."

OpenAI and Jony Ive's AI product slated for 2027 launch - 9to5Mac

Right after yesterday's bombshell announcement that OpenAI had acquired Jony Ive's AI startup to form a new company called io, the entire tech world immediately began asking, "OK, but what is it?" Now, supply chain analyst and frequent Apple leaker Ming-Chi shared what he was able to gather about the mysterious io device. According to Kuo, mass production of the device is slated to begin in 2027, and assembly and shipping will occur outside China, hoping to reduce geopolitical risks. He says Vietnam is currently the most likely assembly location. As exclusively reported by The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI and Jony Ive intend to ship 100 million units of their AI-powered devices. One of the biggest question marks about the product is how people will use, since it has already been reported that it is not a smartphone or smart glasses. Kuo says the device's current form factor is "compact and elegant as an iPod Shuffle," and it is currently a little bit bigger than Humane's AI Pin. He also said the device is meant to be worn around the neck, which is a form factor that companies like Limitless have been experimenting with. According to Kuo, the device will have cameras and microphones in order to capture the user's environment and context, and will rely on the user's smartphones for computing and display capabilities. Would you be willing to wear an AI gadget around your neck? Let us know in the comments.

Jony Ive and Evans Hankey are now OpenAI employees after AI startup acquisition - 9to5Mac

OpenAI has announced the first details about its work with Jony Ive. The announcement includes a video that also answers the mystery of what Jony Ive was filming in San Francisco recently. The effort involves Evans Hankey, who briefly replaced Jony Ive at Apple, and comes in the form of a new firm called io that is merging with OpenAI. Jony Ive, OpenAI employee. Here's the announcement video: And here's a bit from the OpenAI announcement today: Computers are now seeing, thinking and understanding. Despite this unprecedented capability, our experience remains shaped by traditional products and interfaces. Two years ago, Jony Ive and the creative collective LoveFrom, quietly began collaborating with Sam Altman and the team at OpenAI. A collaboration built upon friendship, curiosity and shared values quickly grew in ambition. Tentative ideas and explorations evolved into tangible designs.The ideas seemed important and useful. They were optimistic and hopeful. They were inspiring. They made everyone smile. They reminded us of a time when we celebrated human achievement, grateful for new tools that helped us learn, explore and create. It became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company. And so, one year ago, Jony founded io with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan.We gathered together the best hardware and software engineers, the best technologists, physicists, scientists, researchers and experts in product development and manufacturing. Many of us have worked closely for decades. The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco. As io merges with OpenAI, Jony and LoveFrom will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io. We could not possibly be more excited. Naturally, Mark Gurman at Bloomberg has the best parts of this scoop, reporting that OpenAI has actually bought the AI startup firm for $6.5 billion.

Details Leak About Jony Ive's OpenAI Device Set for 2026 Release

Details about Jony Ive's secretive OpenAI collaboration have leaked from an internal staff call reviewed by The Wall Street Journal (paywalled), and here's what's been revealed. The device won't be glasses or a phone - Ive apparently wasn't keen on making something you'd wear on the body, and both he and Sam Altman want to wean people off screens anyway. Instead, it's being pitched as a "third core device" that would sit in your pocket, or on your desk alongside a MacBook Pro and iPhone. The leaked call reveals the gadget will be pocket-sized, contextually aware of your surroundings and life, and completely screen-free. Altman told OpenAI staff it's "the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen" after testing Ive's prototype at home. OpenAI is acquiring Ive's startup io for $6.5 billion, with Altman suggesting the deal could add $1 trillion in value to the company. The goal is to ship the device by late 2026, and OpenAI has ambitious plans to reach 100 million units "faster than any company has ever shipped 100 million of something new before." Ive described the project as "a new design movement," but Altman is keen to keep everything under wraps to prevent competitors from copying their approach. The team has already been talking to suppliers about scaling production. It's a bold vision that echoes classic Apple integration of hardware and software, though previous attempts at AI-first devices like Humane's AI Pin haven't exactly set the world on fire. Still, with Ive's design chops and OpenAI's AI leadership, the result could be interesting.

Kuo: Jony Ive's Futuristic OpenAI Device Like a Neck-Worn iPod Shuffle

The big news in the technology world this week is that ChatGPT maker OpenAI is working more closely with Apple's former design chief Jony Ive on a futuristic AI device. The company is remaining tight lipped about the device, but Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has shared some alleged details about its design. In a social media post today, Kuo said the device will be "slightly larger" than Humane's discontinued AI Pin. He said the device will look "as compact and elegant as an iPod Shuffle," which was Apple's lowest-priced, screen-less iPod. The design of the iPod shuffle varied over the years, going from a compact rectangle to a square. Like the iPod shuffle, Kuo said OpenAI's device will not have a screen, but it would connect to smartphones and computers. The device will be equipped with microphones for voice control, and it will have cameras that can analyze the user's surroundings. He said that users will be able to wear the device around their necks, like a necklace, whereas the AI Pin can be attached to clothing with a clip. Kuo expects OpenAI's device to enter mass production in 2027, and the final design and specifications might change before then. It remains to be seen if the device will be a success, or if it will go the way of the AI Pin and other attempts at going beyond the smartphone. OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman is certainly confident, as he has tested the device at home and believes it will be "the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen." Quite the claim.

OpenAI Buys Jony Ive's AI Startup to Create a 'New Kind of Computing Form Factor'

OpenAI is acquiring io, the hardware-based AI startup co-created by Jony Ive, OpenAI announced today. Ive has been working with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on io for two years, and the duo expects to develop a family of AI devices. Ive will be involved in the design of the device, as will several former Apple design employees who have been working on the io project, including Tang Tan, Scott Cannon, and Evans Hankey, who led design at Apple after Ive left the company in 2019. Mark Newson, a designer Ive has worked with on several products, is also on the team. Hankey, Tan, and Cannon will join OpenAI. OpenAI has been in talks with Altman and Ive about an acquisition or a partnership since April. OpenAI will provide the AI expertise for the device, while io will handle engineering and LoveFrom will work on design. LoveFrom will take over all design at OpenAI. Ive and Altman started discussing some kind of AI hardware device back in 2023 before io was founded. Ive and Altman want to create a device that is less disruptive than the iPhone, and past descriptions have suggested it will be akin to a smartphone without a screen. Similar screen-free voice-based AI devices like the Rabbit R1 and the Humane Ai Pin have so far not fared well, but Ive is known for his design expertise, and OpenAI is an industry leader. There is a chance that the partnership could result in a transformative device that other companies aren't capable of producing. OpenAI's effort to create an AI hardware product would put it in direct competition with Apple. Apple is behind on AI development, and it is facing a future where people are waiting for the next big thing that could serve as an iPhone replacement. The first device from the partnership between OpenAI and Ive is expected to be "something new." "People have an appetite for something new, which is a reflection on a sort of an unease with where we currently are," Ive said, referring to products available today. Ive and Altman's first devices are slated to debut in 2026. OpenAI's acquisition of io is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to be completed this summer. It is OpenAI's biggest acquisition to date, with the company paying $6.5 billion for io, according to Bloomberg.

OpenAI forges deal with iPhone designer Jony Ive to make AI-enabled devices

Jony Ive attends the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating the opening of the "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style" exhibition on Monday, May 5, 2025, in New York. Evan Agostini/Invision/AP hide caption OpenAI, maker of leading artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, is about to get physical. The company announced that it is buying a device startup called io, launched by former Apple designer Jony Ive, in a deal worth just under $6.5 billion. It's OpenAI's biggest acquisition to date. The tie-up brings together two giants in the tech world: Ive, who designed the iPhone and other iconic Apple products, and OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman, who has been at the forefront of AI development. The two announced the agreement in a video on Wednesday. Altman said their mission will be "figuring out how to create a family of devices that would let people use AI to create all sorts of wonderful things." The underlying idea, he said, is that current devices -- laptops, phones -- are outdated, and not optimized for AI. "AI is an incredible technology, but great tools require work at the intersection of technology, design, and understanding people and the world," Altman said without giving further details. Several other companies are vying for a toehold in the arena of AI-enabled devices, which are able to sense the real world and process information about it in real time using artificial intelligence. Devices could include robots, autonomous vehicles, glasses or other wearable technologies. The technology is often referred to as "physical AI," because it moves AI from the realm of software into tangible objects. Ive and his design firm LoveFrom, which he started after leaving Apple in 2019, will assume design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io, the announcement said. Altman and Ive said they would publicly share their work next year, although they did not give details. Chirag Dekate, an analyst with the tech consultancy Gartner, called the tie-up a "decisive step to shape the user experience end-to-end." "This move secures world-class design expertise and product engineering talent, essential for translating powerful AI models that OpenAI is known for, into tangible, intuitive platform powered experiences," he wrote in an email to NPR. "The race for dominating and shaping Physical AI will accelerate because of OpenAI's strategic moves." It's unclear exactly what Altman and Ive have in mind, and an OpenAI spokesperson declined to provide details. Altman previously invested in a company called Humane, which made an AI-enabled lapel pin. Prior to the deal, which OpenAI says is expected to close this summer, the company already owned 23% of io in a collaborative agreement forged last year.

OpenAI and Jony Ive are building the 'iPhone of AI' -- here's what that means for you

OpenAI made its boldest move yet, which could completely reshape how we interact with artificial intelligence. The OpenAI CEO has acquired io, an AI hardware startup co-founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive, in a $6.5 billion deal. Altman hopes to create the "iPhone of AI" -- an intuitive and human-friendly device that might make our current smartphones feel outdated. The partnership fuses OpenAI's advanced software with Ive's world-renowned hardware design ethos. Beyond a business deal, it's a moonshot to reinvent what AI can look and feel like in everyday life. If successful, this could be the moment AI moves off our screens and into the world around us. "AI is an incredible technology," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement as part of a joint announcement by OpenAI and Jony Ive's design firm, LoveFrom, detailing their collaboration to develop new AI-driven hardware products. "But great tools require work at the intersection of technology, design, and understanding people. No one can do this like Jony and his team." Jony Ive isn't joining OpenAI directly. Instead, his independent firm, LoveFrom, will lead design for the upcoming AI hardware. Over 55 former Apple engineers are also coming onboard, including key names behind the iPhone and Apple Watch: Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tang Tan. The team's first device is expected in 2026. According to early leaks and interviews, the focus will be on "invisible" or ambient computing. That means less screen time, more natural interactions, and potentially a whole new category of AI-integrated products. Both Altman and Ive have been open about the pitfalls of current tech, especially the addictive, screen-based models that dominate our lives. The new AI devices aim to break that pattern, using design and voice-based interfaces to make technology feel less like a distraction and more like an invisible assistant. Leaked concepts suggest we might see: "Everything I've learned over 30 years has led to this," Ive told The Wall Street Journal. "I'm anxious, excited, and grateful." This is OpenAI's largest acquisition to date, and perhaps the most strategic. With ChatGPT already in the hands of millions, the company now has the design talent to build physical devices that could bring generative AI to the forefront of consumer tech. If this works, we could be looking at AI's equivalent of the iPhone moment: an expertly designed, game-changing product that sets the tone for the next decade of personal technology. This $6.5 billion deal with OpenAI, Jony Ive and 55 ex-Apple engineers, means we could soon see AI hardware designed for natural, screen-free interaction by 2026. OpenAI is betting on a future where AI fades into the background, enhancing life as a smart companion instead of dominating it.

Sam Altman and Jony Ive's ChatGPT device is probably going to look like an iPod Shuffle you can wear around your neck - report reveals more about the hyped AI hardware

A new report claims the device will look like an iPod Shuffle and can be worn around your neck, like a necklace Jony Ive and Sam Altman just announced an AI device made by their company, io, is in the works. Now we've got even more info about the mysterious product, and it's rumored to look like an iPod Shuffle. According to industry insider and renowned leaker Ming-Chi-Kuo, the current OpenAI ChatGPT hardware prototype "is slightly larger than the AI Pin, with a form factor as compact and elegant as an iPod Shuffle." Kuo revealed multiple new insights into the product on X, detailing that io's product is expected to enter mass production at the start of 2027. Kuo says while the design and specifications may change before the device enters mass production, it's expected to "have cameras and microphones for environmental detection, with no display functionality." Not only is the device expected to look like an iPod Shuffle that can be worn around your neck, but it is also "expected to connect to smartphones and PCs, utilizing their computing and display capabilities." This information gives us a much deeper insight into what the io product actually is, following OpenAI's $6.5 billion acquisition of the company. In the announcement video, Ive, famous for designing the first iPhone, and Altman, OpenAI's CEO, talked for nine-minutes in a café without really giving information on what the product is, other than it's "an extraordinary moment", and that whatever the pair are working on is going to completely revolutionize the way we interact with artificial intelligence. After reading Kuo's report, it's now clearer than ever that this upcoming product is essentially going to be a better version of the Humane AI Pin. Essentially, it's ChatGPT in a small product you can throw in your pocket or wear around your neck. While this gives us further indication into what to expect, there's still a long time before io's first product enters mass production and that could mean major changes over the next year. Kuo says, "AI integrated into real-world applications, often termed "physical AI," is widely recognized as the next critical trend", and while we may not understand the necessity for these products yet, in two years time everyone might be interacting with ChatGPT and other AI models in a whole new way.

OpenAI taps iPhone designer Jony Ive to develop AI devices

Are OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and iPhone designer Jony Ive getting married? In a manner of speaking. In an announcement blog post that's giving major engagement photo vibes, OpenAI announced it will start building AI hardware with the iconic iPhone designer, a big win for the AI company. On Wednesday, the ChatGPT maker announced that it had acquired Ive's startup, which is simply called io. The purchase price is nearly $6.5 billion, according to Bloomberg, which would make it OpenAI's biggest acquisition to date. The official announcement didn't contain much detail and mostly consisted of Altman and Ive gushing about each other. The lovey-dovey blog post (attributed to "Sam & Jony") certainly makes the union sound like a marriage. "Two years ago, Jony Ive and the creative collective LoveFrom, quietly began collaborating with Sam Altman and the team at OpenAI. A collaboration built upon friendship, curiosity and shared values quickly grew in ambition. Tentative ideas and explorations evolved into tangible designs. The ideas seemed important and useful. They were optimistic and hopeful. They were inspiring. They made everyone smile. They reminded us of a time when we celebrated human achievement, grateful for new tools that helped us learn, explore and create...We gathered together the best hardware and software engineers, the best technologists, physicists, scientists, researchers and experts in product development and manufacturing. Many of us have worked closely for decades. The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco." Fortunately, an accompanying video posted on OpenAI's X page has more concrete information. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. There's plenty of gushing there too, but the gist is OpenAI is going to make AI-powered devices with Ive and his io team. The initiative is "formed with the mission of figuring out how to make a family of devices that would let people use AI to create all sorts of wonderful things," said Altman in the video. Altman also shared that he has a prototype of what Ive and his team have developed, calling it the "coolest piece of technology the world has ever seen." As far back as 2023, there were reports of OpenAI teaming up with Ive for some kind of AI-first device. Altman and Ive's bromance formed over ideas about developing an AI device beyond the current hardware limitations of phones and computers. "The products that we're using to deliver and connect us to unimaginable technology, they're decades old," said Ive in the video, "and so it's just common sense to at least think surely there's something beyond these legacy products." Ive is famous for his work at Apple, where he led the designs for the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Steve Jobs even described Ive as his "spiritual partner." OpenAI's move into hardware with a legendary designer, no less, shows the company has no signs of slowing down in terms of dreaming up new products. Just yesterday, Google launched a fleet of AI products, including XR hardware, indicating to some that it had caught up with OpenAI. But OpenAI just unlocked another new realm in AI competition. OpenAI says it plans to share its work with io and Ive starting in 2026.

Leak reveals what Sam Altman and Jony Ive are cooking up: 100 million AI 'companion' devices

Former Apple designer Jony Ive (here at a 2017 event) has a grand vision for AI devices. Credit: Brian Ach / Getty Images for The New Yorker / Getty Images OpenAI and Jony Ive's vision for its AI device is a screenless companion that knows everything about you. Details leaked to the Wall Street Journal give us a clearer picture of OpenAI's acquisition of io, cofounded by Ive, the iconic iPhone designer. The ChatGPT maker reportedly plans to ship 100 million AI devices designed to fit in with users' everyday life. "The product will be capable of being fully aware of a user's surroundings and life, will be unobtrusive, able to rest in one's pocket or on one's desk," according to a recording of an OpenAI staff meeting reviewed by the Journal. The device "will be a third core device a person would put on a desk after a MacBook Pro and an iPhone," per the meeting which occurred the same day (Wednesday) that OpenAI announced its acquisition of Ive's company. The device will attempt to "wean users from screens" and be a more seamless interaction with users that doesn't involve pulling up a phone or opening up a laptop. "The products that we're using to deliver and connect us to unimaginable technology, they're decades old," said Ive in a video introducing yesterday's announcement. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Ive are hoping to introduce an entirely new device that removes those barriers. If that sounds familiar, recall Altman's controversial obsession with Scarlett Johansson's AI companion in Spike Jonze's sci-fi film Her. In the film, the AI device sits in Joaquin Phoenix's character's shirt pocket and sees and hears what he does. Similarly, OpenAI is reportedly going this route instead of developing XR glasses like Google and Meta. OpenAI and Ive will not be the first to attempt to create such a device. The Humane Ai pin, which Altman invested in, recently tried to disrupt the entire smartphone paradigm and flopped spectacularly. It was led by former Apple executives, but they weren't Jony Ive and Humane didn't have OpenAI's level of investment and influence. That said, it was also just riddled with bugs and inaccurate responses. Even though OpenAI's models still have major hallucination problems, they're still some of the most capable on the market. In this regard, maybe OpenAI will have a better shot.

iPhone design guru and OpenAI chief promise an AI device revolution

Sam Altman and Jony Ive say mystery product created by their partnership will be the coolest thing ever Everything over the last 30 years, according to Sir Jony Ive, has led to this moment: a partnership between the iPhone designer and the developer of ChatGPT. Ive has sold his hardware startup, io, to OpenAI and will take on creative and design leadership across the merged businesses. "I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this place, to this moment," he says in a video announcing the $6.4bn (£4.8bn) deal. The main aim will be to move on from Ive's signature achievement designing Apple's most successful product, as well as the iPod, iPad and Apple Watch. The British-born designer has already developed a prototype io device, and one of its users is OpenAI's chief executive, Sam Altman. Speaking to Ive in a glossy, nine-minute promo heavy with patented Silicon Valley optimism, Altman says of the mystery gadget: "I think it is the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen." Regardless of the hyperbole, expectations would be vaulting anyway. Ive and Altman are worth backing, given the products they have overseen, but observers say they have set themselves an ambitious goal - one made all the more difficult by the legacy of Ive's time at Apple. "It really will have to be amazing to prise people away from today's screen-based devices," says Martha Bennett, an analyst at Forrester Research. Bennett points to the failure of AI hardware devices such as Humane's defunct AI "pin" - a small, wearable AI assistant that received poor reviews - as an example of how the duo have a "steep hill to climb". Ive described the Humane pin and the equally small-scale Rabbit R1 device as "very poor products". So what was the prototype that Altman was testing? He has told employees that OpenAI plans to build 100m AI "companions" that will be part of users' everyday life, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. The product will be "unobtrusive" and capable of being fully aware of a user's surroundings and life, the paper report added, and it will be a third core device that someone will have on their desk after a MacBook Pro and an iPhone. The device is neither a phone nor a pair of glasses; Altman said Ive had been sceptical about building something to be worn on the body, according to the WSJ. The video indicated that the fruits of the io deal - a complex arrangement whereby Ive's LoveFrom design company assumes design and creative oversight of OpenAI and io - will emerge next year. Benedict Evans, a tech analyst, says Ive has clearly been brought onboard to answer a key question for OpenAI and Altman: "How do they somehow bootstrap themselves into becoming a major platform company?" Evans adds: "This is an AI research lab that is running around trying to find solutions that will turn it into the next Apple or Google." AI models are essentially becoming commoditised - "It's not clear how you differentiate them from each other," says Evans - and now Altman is trying to find hardware to combine with OpenAI's groundbreaking software. "OpenAI is trying to do a lot of things at once, and this io deal is part of that. Sam is trying to build the plane while flying it," he adds. The Ive-Altman video is shot in Roman Coppola's Cafe Zoetrope in San Francisco, a pointed reference to a past visionary. Ive and Altman believe that AI will bring them the hardware of the future.

OpenAI buys iPhone architect's startup for $6.4bn

The untested hardware startup, called io, was founded by Apple design guru Jony Ive OpenAI is buying an untested startup for $6.4bn, the ChatGPT maker's biggest acquisition yet. The hardware startup, called io, was founded Apple design guru Jony Ive, known best as one of the principal architects of the iPhone. Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a blog post that their partnership has been two years in the making. "A collaboration built upon friendship, curiosity and shared values quickly grew in ambition," they wrote in the blog post, which offered scant details on upcoming devices. "Tentative ideas and explorations evolved into tangible designs." OpenAI's purchase of io is its biggest known acquisition yet. Ive and a cohort of other Apple alumni founded io one year ago, according to the blog post. It is part of Ive's bigger project called LoveFrom, which describes itself as a "creative collective" made up of architects, artists, engineers, various types of designers, musicians and writers. Ive left Apple in 2019 after a 27-year career as one of the company's foremost product designers. He's known for simple and clean aesthetics that pay attention to small details like packaging and font. One of his early famous designs was the brightly colored bubble-shaped iMac computer. From there, he went on to design the first iPod, iPhone, Macbook Air, Apple Watch and AirPods. For his work on creating such distinctive products, Ive was knighted by Princess Anne at Buckingham Palace in 2012, a moment he called "thrilling" and "particularly humbling". In Altman and Ive's blog post on Wednesday, they wrote that the io team will merge with OpenAI to work "more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco". Ive himself will not join OpenAI as an employee, but his company will "take over design for all of OpenAI, including its software". Since leaving Apple and starting LoveFrom, Ive has mostly remained quiet, and io has not debuted any hardware. His company's list of clients reportedly includes Christie's, Airbnb and Ferrari, though. Another project Ive has been working on is LoveFrom's headquarters in San Francisco, according to the New York Times. Ives told the paper he is designing the headquarters of the company he is developing with OpenAI. OpenAI has likewise yet to unveil a hardware device, but it has indicated it is heading in that direction. It has hired hardware and robotics staff, including Caitlin "CK" Kalinowski who headed Meta's augmented reality glasses initiative. In her LinkedIn announcement, Kalinowski wrote that his new role at OpenAI is to focus on "robotics work and partnerships to help bring AI into the physical world". OpenAI has also invested in the robot startup Physical Intelligence, which aims to bring "general-purpose AI into the physical world". Investors have been throwing money at OpenAi over the past couple of years, which is now valued at $300bn, according to Bloomberg. In March, it closed a funding round of $40bn led by the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank. Microsoft has a 49% stake in the AI company after investing $13bn in 2023. Along with io, OpenAI moved to make other mammoth acquisitions over the last year. It purchased the AI-assisted coding tool Windsurf for $3bn earlier this month and bought the real-time analytics database Rockset for an undisclosed sum last summer.

OpenAI Buys Apple Vet Jony Ive's AI Device Startup for $6.5 Billion

OpenAI is targeting AI-powered hardware in a big way. The AI tech company is purchasing io, an AI device startup, for nearly $6.5 billion. The startup was co-founded by veteran Apple designer Jony Ive, who left the company to form a design outfit, LoveFrom, in 2019. It is OpenAI's priciest acquisition yet. Bloomberg reports that the deal is an "all-stock deal," and will provide OpenAI a pathway from being exclusively a software company to making hardware. Alongside acquiring the io startup itself, OpenAI will bring Ive and other former Apple designers into the fold. OpenAI will add around 55 hardware engineers to its team when the deal closes this summer, pending the standard regulatory approvals. "I have a growing sense that everything I've learned over the last 30 years has led me to this place and to this moment," Ive said in a joint interview conducted alongside OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman. "It's a relationship and a way of working together that I think is going to yield products and products and products." Ive describes Altman as a "rare visionary." For his part, Altman says he thinks the late Steve Jobs, who considered Ive his "spiritual partner," would be "damn proud" of Ive joining OpenAI. Technically, Ive and his design firm, LoveFrom, will remain independent, although Ive -- and LoveFrom -- will take over all design for OpenAI, including its software. Ive co-founded io last year alongside fellow Apple alumni Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tang Tan. Hankey took over Ive's role at Apple in 2019 and remained there until 2023. Tan led Apple's iPhone and Watch design until 2024. Cannon worked at Apple until departing to co-create email app Mailbox, which Dropbox later acquired. It's a powerful group with a rich history of software and hardware design success. "We gathered together the best hardware and software engineers, the best technologists, physicists, scientists, researchers and experts in product development and manufacturing. Many of us have worked closely for decades. The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco," Ive and Altman said today in a joint statement. As part of the massive acquisition, OpenAI is paying io $5 billion in equity. The remaining balance is covered by a deal last year when OpenAI acquired a 23% stake in io. At that time, OpenAI's startup fund also reportedly invested in Ive's own company. "People have an appetite for something new, which is a reflection on a sort of an unease with where we currently are," Ive said. AI devices have so far been primarily a flop, including the Humane AI pin that launched to dreadful reviews last year and was officially killed off earlier this year. Ive called the Humane AI pin and odd Rabbit R1 personal AI assistant devices "very poor" in an interview with Bloomberg. Atlman, Ive, and the rest of the team are developing devices now and they expect the first ones to arrive in 2026. "It will be worth the wait," Altman promises. "It's a crazy, ambitious thing to make."

iPhone designer Jony Ive joins OpenAI, but don't expect a new ChatGPT smartphone

OpenAI is buying Ive's company, io, and they're working on something Jony Ive, who famously designed the iPhone (among other iconic Apple devices), is about to become the design lead for OpenAI, the chatCPT AI giant that, for now, does not make a single hardware device. The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday reported the impending deal, which sees OpenAI acquire Ive's io company in a deal valued at $6.5 billion. As part of that, Ive becomes the design lead for OpenAI, a role he's been slowly-stepping into for some time. Ive, who famously led Apple's design for decades, left the company in 2019 and, in recent months, has expressed some misgivings about the possible negative impact of the previous products he's worked on (which might include the iPhone). "I think when you're innovating, of course, there will be unintended consequences, You hope that the majority will be pleasant surprises. Certain products that I've been very, very involved with, I think there were some unintended consequences that were far from pleasant," said Ive earlier this month, according to the Verge. While reports indicate that Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are interested in building AI-capable consumer hardware, a smartphone is probably not on that menu. Instead, most expect the duo to focus on wearables like earbuds and smartwatches that could be enhanced with, for instance, cameras that could see your surroundings and use onboard AI to help you act on and react to them. Ive's focus will also apparently be on upgrading OpenAI software's visual appeal. So expect an infusion of Ive-ness on ChatGPT on mobile and the desktop (where it has a particularly techy or dev-friendly look), as well as on Sora and Dall-E interfaces. In the latter part of his career at Apple, Ive was most responsible for stripping away skeuomorphism - making digital icons look like their real-world counterparts - across Apple's platforms. OpenAI's software doesn't suffer from the skeuomorphic scourge, but some could argue its overall look is less than elegant. If you're curious if Ive's design skills are still up to snuff, just take a look at the updated Airbnb, which Ive's Loveform firm redesigned. Loveform, by the way, is set to remain a stand-alone company and will, according to The Wall Street Journal, work with OpenAI as a client. The news must sting Apple a little bit. The company, which partnered with OpenAI to include ChatGPT access in Apple Intelligence, has not only failed to deliver its own generative AI, but is falling behind the industry in delivering a true, combined hardware/software AI experience. It'll be fascinating to see what Altman and Ive cook up, and we already have some hints. Altman announced the deal by tweeting that he's "excited to try to create a new generation of AI-powered computers." Taken literally, we might expect an AI PC from the team, but I think here Altman means "computers writ large" in that most intelligent consumer electronics could be considered computing devices. The tweet was accompanied by a video featuring a conversation between Ive and Altman, in which Altman described developing "a family of devices that would let people use AI to create all sorts of different things." Without disclosing the product, Ive revealed that "the first one we've been working on has almost completely captured our imagination." Further, Altman added that Ive handed him the device to take home. "I've been able to live with it and I think it's the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen." No matter what they're building, it's worth remembering that the road to AI hardware success is already littered with the rotting carcasses of failed ventures like Human AI. Regular people have not shown great interest in wearing AI hardware that doesn't align with their current fashion choices. That said, there may be an opportunity for OpenAI, Ive, and Altman in the smart glasses space. It's the one AI-connected device area that appears to be showing some real signs of life. That's mostly down to Meta's efforts with Ray Ban Meta Smart Glasses, but also evidenced by the upcoming influx of Android XR competitors from Google partners Samsung, Warby Parker, and others. Some were announced this week at Google I/O 2025, and all of them will feature Gemini at their core. OpenAI and ChatGPT may be leading in the generative AI space, but Google Gemini is close behind. And if Android XR partners can deliver stylish Gemini Smart Glasses this year, it could quickly vault Gemini into the lead. At the very least, this puts pressure on OpenAI to deliver something. Is Jony Ive the secret sauce that will make ChatGPT AI glasses, earbuds, smart watches, and other consumer hardware possible and desirable? Maybe. OpenAI says we'll see their work next year. Just don't expect a ChatGPT Phone.

OpenAI buys Jony Ive's startup io in $6.5B stock deal

OpenAI just made its biggest move yet -- buying Jony Ive's AI startup -- with hopes of building something that feels as magical as the first iPhone. Initially, it was reported that OpenAI would buy Jony Ive's AI startup, simply named "io", for $500 million. To say that the actual sale cost was a bit higher would be an understatement. The final sale price wound up being nearly $6.5 billion -- in stock. Bloomberg points out that OpenAI is paying $5 billion in equity for io. The balance of the nearly $6.5 billion stems from a partnership in late 2024 that involved OpenAI acquiring a 23% stake in io. The purchase now marks OpenAI's largest acquisition and signals the AI research and deployment company's transition into creating hardware. The deal is expected to be finalized in the coming months, assuming it passes regulatory approvals. The deal is expected to add 55 new employees to OpenAI, including hardware engineers, software developers, and manufacturing experts, according to Bloomberg. These new hires will help realize Ive and Altman's vision for a family of devices. A nine-minute-long video posted to OpenAI's website features Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman discussing how the partnership came to be and what their hopes are going forward. There are many cryptic references to "the device," presumably something that the pair hopes to release as soon as 2026. "Jony recently gave me one of the prototypes of the device for the first time to take home," Altman says. "I've been able to live with it and I think it's the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen." There's no way to know for sure what the device is -- though current speculation points to a voice assistant of some kind. Ive does mention that he believes the world is ready for something entirely new. "The products that we're using to deliver and connect us to unimaginable technology -- they're decades old," Ive says. "It's just common sense to at least think 'Surely, there's something beyond these legacy products.'" What is certain, however, is how excited the pair seems to be about the deal. "What it means to use technology can change in a profound way," Altman says. "I hope we can bring some of the delight, wonder and creative spirit that I first felt using an Apple Computer 30 years ago." Previously, it was reported in 2024 that Ive had been looking for investors to provide funding of $1 billion for the unknown device, or devices. Subsequently, Laurene Powell Jobs is said to have invested an unknown sum through her Emerson Collective, as have other companies.

OpenAI recruits legendary iPhone designer Jony Ive to work on AI hardware in $6.5B deal

OpenAI has recruited Jony Ive, the designer behind Apple's iPhone, to lead a new hardware project for the artificial intelligence company that makes ChatGPT. OpenAI said it is acquiring io, a product and engineering company co-founded by Ive, in a deal valued at nearly $6.5 billion. OpenAI said its CEO Sam Altman had been "quietly" collaborating since 2023 with Ive and his design firm, LoveFrom. Ive worked at Apple for over two decades and is known for his work on iconic iPhone, iMac and iPad designs. Ive was Apple's chief design officer before leaving the company in 2019 to start his own design firm. In a joint letter posted on OpenAI's website Wednesday, Ive and Altman said it "became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company." That's when Ive co-founded io with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan. OpenAI said Ive will not become an OpenAI employee and his design collective, LoveFrom, will remain independent but "will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io." Both OpenAI and Ive's design firm are based in San Francisco. Leading the new io division for OpenAI will be longtime executive Peter Welinder, who led robotics research in the startup's early years and more recently has been vice president of its "new product explorations" team that delves into hardware, robotics and other early stage research. © 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Sir Jony Ive joins OpenAI in $6.5bn deal to topple iPhone

Apple's former chief designer Sir Jony Ive has joined OpenAI in a $6.5bn (£4.8bn) deal to challenge the iPhone. OpenAI on Wednesday announced the takeover of io Products, a San Francisco start-up founded by Sir Jony and a group of other ex-Apple designers just last year. The takeover paves the way for Sir Jony, the Briton famed for designing some of Apple's most iconic products, to create a new generation of devices that could challenge the iPhone as the dominant piece of modern hardware. Sir Jony seemingly took aim at his previous employer when announcing the new deal, hitting out at the "legacy" products on the market and the "decades old" technology within them. Sam Altman, OpenAI's co-founder and chief, said that io was "formed with the mission of figuring out how to create a family of devices that would let people use AI to create all sorts of wonderful things." Apple shares fell by more than 2pc after the announcement. Sir Jony was Apple's chief designer between 1992 and 2019. He was behind products including the iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad, and was described by Steve Jobs as his "spiritual partner" at the company. The Briton founded io with the backing of Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple's co-founder, and has recruited a team of engineers from the Californian tech giant, including his successor, Scott Cannon. The team has already developed a prototype product based on AI. Mr Altman said: "Jony called one day and said: 'This is the best work our team has ever done.' I mean, Jony did the iPhone, Jony did the MacBook Pro. These are like the defining ways people use technology. It's hard to beat those things. Those are really wonderful." He claimed the prototype was "the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen." Mr Altman added: "AI is such a big leap forward in terms of what people can do that it needs a new kind of computing form factor to get the maximum potential out of it." Sir Jony said: "People have an appetite for something new, which is a reflection on a sort of an unease with where we currently are." The announcement will ramp up the pressure on Apple, which has been struggling to navigate both the shift to AI and Donald Trump's trade war. The company's shares have plunged 19pc since the start of the year amid fears about the impact of tariffs on China, where many of its devices are assembled, and concerns about the slow speed of its product development. While Apple was one of the first tech companies to embrace AI with its voice assistant Siri, rivals have rapidly overtaken it in recent years. Although it licenced ChatGPT last year and promised a radically improved Siri, Apple has struggled to make a success of it. Last month, it admitted that it could not say when the Siri overhaul would be delivered, admitting it would "take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features." Earlier this year, the company suspended an AI feature that created summaries of headlines from the news after complaints from the BBC and others. OpenAI is one of the company's that has stolen a march on Apple in the AI race. It became one of the world's most valuable startups after ChatGPT became an internet sensation, following its launch in November 2023. The company already had a stake in io and will pay $5bn to acquire the remaining shares it doesn't already own. The deal values io at $6.5bn (£4.8bn) and will add around 55 engineers to OpenAI, including Sir Jony. The 58-year-old is likely to receive a significant payout from the deal. Sir Jony was born in Chingford, in the suburbs of London, and studied at Newcastle Polytechnic before moving to San Francisco in the late 1980s. Diagnosed as dyslexic at school, he co-founded a design consultancy one in the US that caught the eye of Apple, which hired him to work full-time. Sir Jony was knighted in 2012 for services to design and enterprise.

Legendary Apple designer has been tasked with the impossible -- what is OpenAI and Jony Ive's next move?

Legendary ex-Apple designer Jony Ive is teaming up with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, but what exactly they're working on remains a mystery. Almost a year ago, Ive, the former VP of Hardware Engineering at Apple, announced he was working on a new AI project and collaborating with OpenAI. Now it looks like that collaboration is set in stone -- OpenAI has acquire "io", Ive's AI startup. The acquisition hints at long-term plans for some sort of AI hardware, although Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman kept things pretty quiet about the exact nature of the hardware in a video released on Wednesday. A couple of rumors hint that Ive and OpenAI may be planning to take on one of the most ill-fated categories in tech in recent years: AI gadgets. See also: Best phone deals in May 2025 Ive and Altman's joint announcement reveals that OpenAI's acquisition is the latest update in their collaboration over the past year. Together, they've been developing some type of new AI device, although details are sparse on what exactly that is. The pair chatted about the project in a video included in the announcement, waxing poetic about their AI dreams. "I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this moment," Ive said in the video, set in a San Francisco cafe. "The values and vision of Sam and the teams at OpenAI and io are a rare inspiration." Altman seems just as eager to work with the legendary Apple alum, stating, "I hope we can bring some of the delight, wonder, and creative spirit that I first felt using an Apple Computer 30 years ago." Ive and Altman shared little to nothing about the specifics of their AI project, but some rumors already hint at what to expect. Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported on X on Thursday that the AI device Ive and Altman are developing has "a form factor as compact and elegant as an iPod Shuffle." It will be designed to be worn like a necklace and include cameras and microphones, but it will not include a display. Instead, it will rely on a connected smartphone or PC for computing and display capabilities. While Altman and Ive have not officially confirmed that description, it paints a vivid image. It's clearly some type of AI device, which doesn't come as much of a surprise. However, what will be surprising is if Ive and Altman can deliver an AI gadget that succeeds where a few others have already flopped. In 2024, we saw two purpose-made AI devices rise to stardom only to flop shortly after due to a mix of defects, poor functionality, and even melting chargers (yes, really). Of course, we're referring to the ill-fated Rabbit R1 and the Humane AI pin. Both were among the first physical devices explicitly built for AI, but neither was able to catch on. The Humane AI pin was awkward to use and too expensive for most people. The Rabbit R1 didn't offer enough unique features, and its AI often struggled to answer questions accurately or perform basic tasks. On a bigger-picture level, neither of these AI gadgets could find a foothold because our phones are already so good at doing the same things. AI apps can do everything these AI gadgets can, so why bother paying hundreds of dollars for a second device that does less? This question will be crucial for Ive and Altman to answer effectively if they want to change the narrative around AI gadgets. Ive may have found success at Apple for designing some of the brand's most iconic devices, but he also designed the Magic Mouse, which infamously has its charging port awkwardly placed on the bottom. So, as brilliant as Ive may be, this new AI device isn't a guaranteed win. With that said, if anyone can design an AI gadget you actually want to use, it's probably him.

You May Laugh When You Hear What OpenAI's Top Secret AI Gadget Allegedly Looks Like

OpenAI's new partnership with famed iPhone designer Jony Ive has the rumor mill churning -- and the latest may give you a guffaw. According to supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Ive and Altman's secretive AI companion device -- news of which leaked to the Wall Street Journal last week -- may look a lot like an iPod shuffle, but worn on a string around your neck, like a preposterous AI-inflected statement necklace. "The current prototype is slightly larger than [Humane's] AI Pin, with a form factor as compact and elegant as an iPod Shuffle," Kuo said in a lengthy X post shortly after OpenAI announced that it was purchasing io, Ive's hardware company. "The design and specifications may change before mass production." Per the analyst's research, "one of the intended use cases is wearing the device around the neck," and although it won't have any screens, it may "have cameras and microphones for environmental detection," which could well jibe with Altman's claim in the employee call announcing the project that the device will be "fully aware" of its surroundings. To us, this product sounds like a yassified version of Humane's disastrous AI pin, which itself was the size of a smart watch face and sucked so comprehensively that more people returned the $700 disaster than purchased it, forcing the company into a speedy total collapse. As such, Kuo's take isn't exactly optimistic for OpenAI. "In my view, one of OpenAI's motives for announcing its collaboration with Jony Ive now is likely to shift market focus from [Google's recent I/O conference]," the Apple analyst wrote. "Google's ecosystem and AI integration, showcased in the I/O keynotes, pose a challenge that OpenAI currently struggles to address. As a result, OpenAI is leveraging a new narrative to redirect attention." (There are a few other things OpenAI may want to redirect market attention away from as well, including ChatGPT's very public woes and warning signs of yet another leadership shakeup after Altman announced that he was creating a new "CEO" position that reports directly to him, which will offload much of his own work onto that new executive, Instacart's Fidji Simo.) Looking at the bigger picture, Kuo noted that OpenAI's still-unconfirmed new AI gadget is part of a broader trend towards so-called "physical AI," which he described as "AI integrated real-world" -- another sign that OpenAI is now following the herd instead of leading it. "While the success of the Jony Ive-OpenAI partnership remains uncertain," the researcher mused, "it clearly aligns with this trend." Kuo then went on to cite programming pioneer Alan Kay, who famously said that "people who are really serious about software should make their own hardware." It is indeed a big step for OpenAI to be making its own devices -- though at first bluff, there's nothing terribly impressive about a derivative form factor that looks like an iPod Shuffle.

OpenAI's next big bet: 100 million physical AI 'companions'

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman just said the company has a chance to "do the biggest thing" in its history: roll out 100 million AI-powered devices designed to sit on your desk, fit in your pocket, and integrate seamlessly into your daily life. According to The Wall Street Journal, that was the promise Altman made to employees in a company-wide meeting Wednesday, detailing plans for a family of consumer hardware products created in collaboration with legendary Apple (AAPL) design chief Jony Ive. Earlier in the day, OpenAI purchased Ive's hardware startup, io, for $6.5 billion. Altman framed the move as an opportunity to reshape how humans interact with machines -- and a $1 trillion value-creation play for OpenAI. The device -- or devices -- have been shrouded in secrecy since Ive and Altman started working together last year. Altman said, according to the Journal, that the device will be an AI "companion" that is fully aware of your surroundings, unobtrusively embedded in your life, and capable of changing how you interact with technology. Not enough information? Well, from what Altman and Ive have said: The device won't be a phone. It won't be a headset. And it won't be a screen-first experience. (Both men have said they want to move away from screens). Altman reportedly told staff what they're working on won't be a phone or smart glasses. Ive had been skeptical of building wearable tech, which has largely flopped in the market (although Ive was successful with the Apple Watch). According to the Journal's reporting, Ive spoke about entering a "new design moment," and Altman said the collaboration would result in a "family of devices." The goal is to ship the first version of the device by the end of 2026. Altman claimed OpenAI could reach 100 million units sold faster than any company in history. The device first took shape when Altman and Ive floated an idea: What if every ChatGPT subscriber had a purpose-built computer? But the duo soon realized that the existing hardware paradigms -- keyboards, screens, and apps -- weren't enough. ChatGPT, they believed, was trapped in a legacy model: typing into a web interface -- and waiting. The vision now is more ambitious. Altman described the project in the meeting as an attempt to fulfill what he called the "sci-fi dream" of AI -- a departure from typing, swiping, and screens. The stakes are high. OpenAI is already burning through cash -- the company is projected to lose $44 billion before eventually turning a profit in 2029 -- and launching a category of consumer hardware is notoriously difficult. Humane, another AI device startup that was backed by Altman and staffed by ex-Apple veterans, recently flopped with its screenless AI Pin. But the logic behind OpenAI's latest bet seems strategic as much as it seems ambitious. Right now, Apple and Google (GOOGL) control a large chunk of the platforms through which billions of users access generative AI, so OpenAI is looking to own the full stack -- software, hardware, and user experience -- before anyone else.

OpenAI & Jony Ive's AI necklace rumored to have iPod shuffle form factor

According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, OpenAI and Jony Ive are planning a neck-worn AI device with a similar form factor to the iPod Shuffle. TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo revealed on X that the new AI device from Jony Ive and OpenAI is expected to enter mass production in 2027. In his post, he said the prototype is slightly larger than Humane's (failed) AI Pin but remains as compact and elegant as an iPod Shuffle. The device won't include a display and is designed to be worn around the neck, using cameras and microphones for environmental awareness. It will connect to smartphones and PCs for computing power and display output, positioning it squarely in the emerging category of ambient, screenless AI. Kuo's tweet followed news that OpenAI is acquiring Ive's hardware startup, LoveFrom's subsidiary "io," in a deal worth around $6.5 billion. OpenAI plans to release its first products from the collaboration in 2026, with full-scale production coming the following year. The partnership is intended to bring Ive's industrial design expertise into OpenAI's ecosystem as the company moves beyond software and into the physical world. By manufacturing the device outside China, OpenAI and Ive are also signaling a deliberate move to avoid geopolitical risks. That supply chain shift echoes Apple's own recent efforts to diversify production beyond China. This project represents a major push into what analysts call "physical AI," where artificial intelligence moves off the screen and into wearable, voice-activated, and context-aware devices. While companies like Meta and Google have dabbled in ambient computing, OpenAI has lacked a hardware strategy -- until now. For Apple users, the new device could be the first serious alternative to AirPods or Apple Watch for passive, always-available AI support. The lack of a screen, paired with camera and audio input, suggests a future where interaction happens naturally, without the need to pull out a phone or look at a display. That's a sharp contrast with Apple's Vision Pro headset or iPhone-first approach, and it could pressure Apple to accelerate its own ambient computing roadmap. The iPod Shuffle comparison is a deliberate callback to a time when Apple changed how we interacted with music by making hardware almost invisible. OpenAI and Ive appear to be chasing that same level of cultural integration, this time for AI. Whether it becomes the next iPhone or the next AI novelty will depend on execution, ecosystem, and how ready the public is to embrace a new kind of wearable intelligence.

Apple's famed design leader Jony Ive is coming to OpenAI

OpenAI is acquiring io, a hardware startup co-founded by Apple (AAPL) design legend Jony Ive, in a deal valued at approximately $6.5 billion, the company announced Wednesday. The all-stock transaction is OpenAI's largest acquisition to date -- and a major signal that OpenAI is moving aggressively beyond software and into the business of building physical devices powered by artificial intelligence. The deal brings OpenAI the full capabilities of io's team, which includes 50-plus hardware engineers and designers, many of whom previously worked on products such as the iPhone, Apple Watch, and iPad. With the acquisition, OpenAI now has a dedicated hardware division, positioning it to create consumer-facing AI-native devices that could redefine how people interact with technology. Apple shares fell 1.8% following the news. Meanwhile, the ChatGPT-maker has rapidly evolved from a research-focused lab into one of the most valuable private companies in the world, with a current valuation of $300 billion. While details of the products remain under wraps, reports from The Wall Street Journal suggest that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Ive's design firm, LoveFrom, have spent the past two years secretly developing a device "that will move consumers beyond screens." Possibilities include: screenless devices, wearable AIs, and camera-based context-aware assistants. "This is a totally new kind of thing," Altman told Bloomberg of the products the companies are working on, which are expected to launch in 2026. He added in the interview that "in the same way that the smartphone didn't make the laptop go away, I don't think our first thing is going to make the smartphone go away." Altman described the project to Bloomberg as an effort to deliver a benchmark in quality and innovation -- "a level that has never happened before." According to the OpenAI CEO, unlocking AI's full potential will require "a new kind of computing form factor." Ive, widely credited for shaping modern consumer technology, said in a statement that he has "a growing sense that everything I've learned over the last 30 years has led me to this place and to this moment." Altman added: "AI is an incredible technology, but great tools require work at the intersection of technology, design, and understanding people and the world. No one can do this like Jony and his team. What it means to use technology can change in a profound way." Ive's return to consumer tech in partnership with OpenAI comes amid intensifying pressure on Apple to deliver compelling advances in artificial intelligence. While Apple and OpenAI have recently collaborated -- including integrating ChatGPT into Siri and Apple's system-wide writing tools -- the acquisition of io suggests that OpenAI may soon compete more directly with Apple in defining the next generation of consumer tech. "This is a crazy, ambitious thing to make," Altman told Bloomberg. "It will be worth the wait."

Something Weird Is Going on With the Investors in Jony Ive's Startup That Was Just Bought by OpenAI

Back in December, Swedish tech entrepreneur Sebastian Siemiatkowski -- the guy behind Klarna, the infamous burrito financing app -- directed his family investment company to dump $5 billion into AI startups. The investment made up a "mini portfolio" of four "prominent US-based AI companies," a press release said at the time. Those were software engineer startup Anysphere, generative AI language outfit Speak, bioresearch venture Chai Discovery -- and a fourth, anonymous company. On its face, there's nothing out of the ordinary about that. AI startups nabbed almost half of all venture capitalist funds raised last year, according to Reuters, amounting to about $96 billion. Anonymous startups are likewise pretty common, a tactic known as "stealth mode" made by founders who want to protect intellectual property or avoid media scrutiny until they're ready to announce their business. However, this "mini portfolio" earmarked a whopping 70 percent of its investment funds to the anonymous firm, or about $3.6 billion. All anyone knew was that this was a "seed investment" toward the launch of a "new AI hardware product." Six months later, a post by Siemiatkowski is clearing some things up: the anonymous company was "io," another secret startup founded in 2024 by Jony Ive. Ive is the superstar British-American designer behind iconic Apple products like the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and Apple Watch, and even some not-so-renowned ones, like that weird hockey puck mouse, and a 90s chic toilet. But Ive isn't why it's weird. A day before Siemiatkowski's post, tech billionaire Sam Altman announced that OpenAI had acquired io in a bizarre dispatch that reads more like a wedding website than a corporate press release. OpenAI paid $6.4 billion for io -- meaning the Klarna King's secret investment in a little anonymous startup was now a public partnership with the biggest AI startup on the planet. Even stranger are some now-deleted posts by former Google designer Luke Wroblewski, who now spends his days as a director at Sutter Hill Ventures, a close-lipped titan in the tech funding space. "Congrats to io on the $6.5B acquisition by OpenAI today," Wroblewski wrote, according to TechCrunch. "Happy to have been investors in this one." TC managed to nab a comment from Wroblewski's now-deleted post on X-formerly-Twitter, which suggests that Sutter Hill "was the second largest investor in 'io,'" an idea that Bloomberg seems to support. The question is, why delete? Is there some reason that Sutter Hill isn't actually happy to be have been investors? Is someone else involved in the deal trying to keep a lid on where the money's coming from? And most strikingly, why the silence? Sutter had nothing to tell TC after it reached out to ask, giving an unmistakably weird aura to the rollout. The drama comes as netizens and news media alike are abuzz with speculation about Sam Altman's secretive "AI companion" device, which he began teasing back in 2023. So far, Altman has told us the device will be "unobtrusive," "pocket sized," and "fully aware" of everything in its users' lives. It's probably not smart glasses, according to the Verge. Whatever it is, Sam Altman has an ambitious plan to roll out 100 million of them by 2026. Time will tell if it's worth all the secrecy and bluster -- or if it turns out to be another Humane AI pin.

No one wants your talking trinkets, Sir Jony

Or maybe not. Altman and Ive share a belief that today's smartphones and tablets don't get us to the fount of wisdom of generative AI easily and quickly enough. New hardware objects - ones we wear, carry or install in the corner of a room, like an Alexa - will make these redundant. But this may be beyond the talent of any designer, even one as accomplished as Ive. The Chingford-born knight did his best work long ago; once he was put in charge of all design at Apple, after Steve Jobs's death, the trouble began. For example, his determination to make laptops even thinner was costly - avoid if you can any Apple laptop made between 2015 and 2019. It began an era of costly repair programmes and class action lawsuits. "Got my $395 [class action payout] today. I replaced that flawed keyboard three times over 2 years and honestly I could've done it 4-5 times," wrote one MacBook owner. "That vague hostility towards humans keeps peeping through," wrote the author Charles Arthur, in a review of the items that made up the Ive design portfolio. Apple's products improved after Ive departed. But even assuming he returns to form, and can pull a rabbit out of the hat, Ive face many more challenges. The strength of generative AI is, as the name suggests, generating stuff: creating textual or visual material to order, and this something anything can do. According to the reports, "the product will be capable of being fully aware of a user's surroundings and life, will be unobtrusive, able to rest in one's pocket or on one's desk". So more like Alexa, then. But all people really wanted from Alexa was playing a song, running a timer. Amazon tried very hard indeed to find a hit, embedding Alexa in over a dozen different products, from new form factors such as dongles and buttons, to existing ones like wall plugs, clocks and even a microwave. They were cheap too, being sold at or below cost. After losses for the division reached some $10bn a year Amazon scaled back the programme, leaving a graveyard of abandoned hardware. China's dramatic entry into generative AI, running models at a fraction of the cost of OpenAI's models, suggests generative AI is going to be in more places like TVs and earbuds. And OpenAI has no competitive "moat", no special features than another model cannot match. For analysts like Edison's Richard Windsor, the battle for embedded AI has already been won - it will be some form of smart glasses. Maybe OpenAI plans to offer us a virtual person - a pocket therapist or nanny. Altman is unhealthily obsessed with the movie Her, in which Joaquin Phoenix falls for an AI Scarlett Johansson. Just not what we need. And good luck to anyone who can prise us away from our phones, portals for addictive social networks, that we carry with us anyway. "The hardware route for OpenAI will yield nothing but pain, and the $6.4bn valuation will rapidly be amortised to zero once Jony Ive gets bored and moves on to something else," wrote Windsor. The deal is "just another reason to steer clear of [OpenAI] and under no circumstances should anyone be dependent on its technology". Less Black Mirror, then, and more Black Friday fire sale. So I think the sceptics have called it correctly. The longer Ive and OpenAI don't announce anything at all, the more we can believe that a magic device is just around the corner. Why break the spell?

Apple Design Legend Jony Ive Joins OpenAI in $6.4 Billion Deal - Decrypt

Get ready for the post-cellphone world. OpenAI today announced the acquisition of io, the year-old AI hardware startup founded by former Apple Chief Design Officer Jony Ive, in an all-equity deal valued at $6.4 billion. The acquisition aims to integrate io's hardware expertise with OpenAI's research, engineering, and product teams in San Francisco. Ive is renowned for his role in designing iconic Apple products, including the original iMac, an innovative, all-in-one computer that helped establish simple, gorgeous, user-friendly design as the hallmark of a company that was mere months away from bankruptcy when Steve Jobs returned from exile in 1997. The iMac was the first product launched by Jobs, and it helped fuel the company's legendary turnaround, ultimately making Apple the most valuable company in the world by market cap. Now, with a $3 trillion market cap, it has slipped into the #3 spot, trailing Microsoft and Nvidia -- both of whose fortunes rest largely on artificial intelligence. Apple stock dropped nearly 2% today on the news before recovering somewhat. Apple has struggled to keep up with the fast-changing pace of AI, notably with its "Apple Intelligence" features, which promised a raft of AI-driven new features that have yet to be delivered. The OpenAI-io merger aims to leapfrog cellphones and keyboard-based computers with a variety of new wearable devices. In a promotional video keyed to today's announcement, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that he'd been using a prototype of an io device. "Jony called one day and said, 'This is the best work our team has ever done,'" Altman recalled. "Jony gave me one of the prototypes of the device for the first time to take home, and I've been able to live with it, and I think it is the coolest piece of technology that the world has ever seen." Added Altman: "The products that we're using to deliver and connect us to unimaginable technology, they're decades old. So it's just common sense to at least think that surely there's something beyond these legacy products." Ive's secretive company, io, was established with former Apple colleagues Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tang Tan. The San Francisco-based io team has approximately 55 hardware engineers, software developers, and manufacturing experts. Following the acquisition, Ive's separate design firm, LoveFrom, will assume design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI's product lineup. "I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this moment," said Ive. "While I am both anxious and excited about the responsibility of the substantial work ahead, I am so grateful for the opportunity to be part of such an important collaboration." The first products resulting from this collaboration are expected to launch in 2026, marking a significant step in OpenAI's expansion into consumer hardware.

Apple design legend Jony Ive joins OpenAI

San Francisco (AFP) - The legendary designer behind Apple's iPhone, Jony Ive, has joined OpenAI to create devices tailored for using generative artificial intelligence, according to a video posted Wednesday by the ChatGPT maker. Ive and his team will take over design at OpenAI as part of an acquisition of his startup named "IO" valued at $6.5 billion. Sharing no details, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said in the video that a prototype Ive shared with him "is the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen." The San Francisco-based AI company finished the clip with a message that it looks forward to sharing fruits of the device collaboration next year. British-born Ive was an Apple employee from 1992 to 2019, during which time he oversaw the development of the brand's now legendary products, from the iMac and AirPods to the iPod, iPhone and Apple Watch. Working closely with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, his designs revitalized Apple, making it the company with the world's third-largest market capitalization and a global standard for product design. Altman said a transformational new technology such as AI deserves a revolutionary new way to interact with it. Comparing AI to "magic intelligence," Altman said the technology behind ChatGPT "deserves something much better" than having to type questions into a laptop. Ive began collaborating with Altman two years ago and it "became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company," the pair said in a joint post. "The products that we're using to deliver and connect us to unimaginable technology are decades old," Ive said. "So it's just common sense to at least think, surely there's something beyond these legacy products." Dethroning smartphones? OpenAI putting its hot chatbot into a new kind of gadget could be a threat to Apple, which has struggled with its AI strategy, particularly when it comes to making its Siri digital assistant smarter. Apple shares were down nearly three percent in after-market trades on Wednesday. Almost a year after announcing the integration of a host of generative AI functionalities into its new iPhone 16, Apple has been slow to implement them. The Cupertino, California-based group has also postponed the release of an updated version of its Siri voice assistant until next year, at best. The race to put generative AI into devices also involves Amazon, which is adding the technology to its Alexa voice assistant, with a rollout of that service currently underway. Dubbed Alexa+ and boosted with AI, Amazon's adoption of the technology is intended primarily for connected devices in the home, such as smart speakers or televisions. Hyped startup Humane in 2024 launched its AI Pin, a square gadget to be worn like a brooch that was theoretically capable of answering spoken questions, taking photos, and making phone calls. But it quickly failed to catch on due to its high price and poor performance, and was subsequently acquired at a low price by HP. IDC advertising and marketing technology research director Roger Beharry Lall said that it remains to be seen if a gadget dedicated to using AI can dethrone smartphones that still rule modern lifestyles. "Right now, the phone is the medium through which you can access these technologies," Beharry Lall said. "If anyone can figure out what the next-generation interface is going to look like, it's probably Mr. Ive." OpenAI has become one of the most successful companies in Silicon Valley, propelled to prominence in 2022 with the release of ChatGPT, its generative AI chatbot.

OpenAI is buying iPhone designer Jony Ive's AI devices startup for $6.4 billion

OpenAI said on Wednesday that it's buying Jony Ive's AI devices startup io for about $6.4 billion in an all-equity deal that includes its current stake in the company. Ive is taking on "deep creative and design responsibilities across OpenAI and io," OpenAI said in a statement. The company said that it is merging with OpenAI, while Ive and his "creative collective" called LoveFrom will stay independent. In a blog post on Wednesday from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Ive, the pair said that io was founded a year ago by Ive, along with Apple alumni Scott Cannon, Tang Tan and Evans Hankey, who briefly took over Ive's role at Apple after he departed. "The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco," the post said. The purchase is by far OpenAI's largest and comes weeks after the company agreed to buy AI-assisted coding tool Windsurf for $3 billion. Prior to that, OpenAI acquired analytics database company Rockset for an undisclosed sum in 2024. Ive announced in 2019 that he was leaving Apple, where he was the longtime chief design officer, to start LoveFrom. The New York Times reported last year that LoveFrom's clients pay the firm up to $200 million a year and that its designers at the time were working on projects for Christie's, Airbnb and Ferrarri. Airbnb said in 2020 that Ive was consulting with the company on hiring and future products. Ive is responsible for designing Apple's most iconic products, including the iPod, iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air. He also helped design Apple's new Cupertino headquarters, called Apple Park, a project that began in 2004 with the campus officially opening in 2019. News of the acquisition comes as OpenAI, which was recently valued at $300 billion in a funding round led by SoftBank, is rushing to stay ahead in the generative AI race, where competitors including Google, Anthropic and Elon Musk's xAI are investing heavily and regularly rolling out new products. Part of staying ahead in that race includes shoring up its hardware operations. To further its hardware ambitions, OpenAI hired the former head of Meta's Orion augmented reality glasses initiative in November to lead its robotics and consumer hardware efforts. Caitlin "CK" Kalinowski wrote in an announcement at the time that the role would "initially focus on OpenAI's robotics work and partnerships to help bring AI into the physical world and unlock its benefits for humanity." Also late last year, OpenAI invested in Physical Intelligence, a robot startup based in San Francisco, which raised $400 million at a $2.4 billion post-money valuation. Other investors included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Thrive Capital, Lux Capital and Bond Capital. The startup focuses on "bringing general-purpose AI into the physical world," per its website, and it aims to do this by developing large-scale artificial intelligence models and algorithms to power robots.

iPhone designer Jony Ive joining OpenAI to help develop new devices

Alain Sherter is a senior managing editor with CBS News. He covers business, economics, money and workplace issues for CBS MoneyWatch. Jony Ive, the celebrated former Apple industrial design maven behind the look of the iPhone, iPad and other of the technology giant's products, has joined OpenAI. Ive will help the artificial intelligence company create devices with generative AI capability, according to a video posted on OpenAI's X account on Wednesday. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in the video that a prototype Ive shared with him "is the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen."

OpenAI acquires Jony Ive's io Products in $6.5B all-stock deal - SiliconANGLE

OpenAI today announced plans to buy io Products Inc., a consumer electronics startup led by former Apple Inc. chief design officer Jony Ive. The deal reportedly values one-year-old io Products at $6.5 billion. OpenAI, which already has a 23% stake in the startup as a result of an earlier investment, will pay $5 billion worth of shares for the remaining 77%. The transaction is expected to close this summer. In a post on X, OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman wrote that Ive will support the ChatGPT developer's efforts to "create a new generation of AI-powered computers." During his nearly 30-year tenure at Apple, Ive played a key role in designing many iPhone, iPad and MacBook models. He also helped develop the blueprints of the company's $5 billion corporate headquarters. After leaving in 2019, Ive established a design studio called LoveFrom Inc. that counts Airbnb Inc. and Ferrari S.p.A among its clients. The executive launched io Products, the company that OpenAI is acquiring, last year. Its team reportedly includes about 55 engineers, scientists, researchers, physicists and product development professionals. Those staffers will join OpenAI following the acquisition while Ive is set to take on "deep creative and design responsibilities across OpenAI and io." LoveFrom, the design studio that Ive launched after leaving Apple, is reportedly also involved in the transaction. It will receive a stake in OpenAI while the ChatGPT developer will become a client of the studio. Last year, The New York Times reported that companies pay LoveFrom up to $200 million per year to support their product design initiatives. According to the Wall Street Journal, OpenAI teamed up with LoveFrom two years ago to develop a new consumer device. The paper's sources said that the gadget is meant "to move consumers beyond screens". At least one of the product designs that the companies have explored is for a pair of headphones. When rumors of the acquisition first emerged in April, The Information reported that io Products was developing a consumer device with artificial intelligence features and no display. Some of the publication's sources said that the gadget resembles a smartphone. Others indicated that io Products was also considering designing smart home products. According to Bloomberg, the first devices developed through OpenAI's collaboration with Ive are set to launch next year. The former Apple executive is also expected to become involved in other parts of the AI provider's business. That includes the development of future ChatGPT releases. The acquisition comes a few weeks after OpenAI inked another multibillion-dollar acquisition. Earlier this month, it bought developer tooling startup Windsurf in a deal reportedly worth $3 billion. Windsurf, officially Exafunction Inc., provides a code editor that uses AI to automate a range of programming tasks.

OpenAI acquires former iPhone architect's AI start-up for $6.5bn

OpenAI is interested in creating AI-powered consumer tech, reports say Altman was considering headphones. OpenAI is buying io, the AI start-up founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive and other former engineers from the company, Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan. According to Bloomberg, the all-equity deal is valued at almost $6.5bn. While the Wall Street Journal reports that OpenAI will be paying $5bn in the transaction, as the company already owns 23pc of io. Ive and his design firm LoveFrom began quietly collaborating with the OpenAI a few years ago, a blog post on the company's website read. However, this proved not enough, leading to Ive and his former colleagues creating io - a hardware company - with the aim of building a new family of products for OpenAI. The acquisition is by far OpenAI's largest, coming weeks after the ChatGPT-maker agreed to buy Windsurf, an AI-assisted coding tool, for $3bn. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has shown previous interest in AI consumer devices. In 2020, he invested $180m in Humane, a start-up that failed to catch on with its less than functional AI pin. Earlier this year, HP agreed to acquire much of Human's assets for a mere $116m. Io will merge entirely with OpenAI and is set to work more "intimately" with the company's research, engineering and product teams, and while Ive and LoveFrom will assume "deep" creative responsibilities across both OpenAI and io, they will not be joining the AI giant. However, dozens of io engineers, software developers and experts, including other io co-founders, will join OpenAI as part of the acquisition. The first devices are set to be launched in 2026, with reports suggesting that Altman and LoveFrom previously considered headphones and other devices with cameras. The acquisition comes just after Fidji Simo, the CEO of Instacart and a former high-ranking executive at Meta, joined OpenAI as its CEO of applications. Her hiring will allow Altman to focus on research, compute and safety at the company, he said at the time. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

'OpenAI to Ship 100 Mn AI Devices, io Acquisition to add $1 Trillion in Value' | AIM

The device will also not be a pair of glasses, and Jony Ive has reported scepticism about building anything that can be worn on the body. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that the company plans to ship 100 million AI companion devices, following the acquisition of the startup io, led by former Apple designer Jony Ive. The development was first reported by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on Wednesday, citing an internal discussion between Altman and his staff. Altman also suggested that the $6.5 billion acquisition could add $1 trillion to OpenAI's valuation. Altman and Ive have hinted that these AI companion devices will be fully aware of the user's surroundings while offering an 'unobtrusive' experience. The report added that the AI companion devices will be standalone units. However, OpenAI has not officially revealed the nature of the device. Ive expressed scepticism about building anything that can be worn on the body. Altman has also said that the goal is to release the first device by late next year and that OpenAI will deliver products faster than any other company. The development happened after OpenAI and Ive announced the acquisition of io, which is focused on building hardware products around artificial intelligence. "Computers are now seeing, thinking and understanding," Altman and Ive said in a joint statement. "Despite this unprecedented capability, our experience remains shaped by traditional products and interfaces," stated Ive and Altman regarding the motive behind the initiative. During his tenure at Apple, Ive played a key role in designing the iPhone, iPod, iPad and MacBook Air. He also contributed to the design of Apple Park, the company's headquarters in Cupertino, which opened in 2019 after years of planning that began in 2004.

Are OpenAI and Jony Ive headed for an iPhone moment?

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company's weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week here. OpenAI will acquire the AI device startup co-founded by Apple veteran Jony Ive and Sam Altman, called "io," for nearly $6.5 billion, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. This almost certainly will put OpenAI in the consumer hardware business, and it seems like it will soon release a dedicated personal AI device. Ive is a pedigreed design guru with a track record of creating iconic tech products like the iPhone and the Apple Watch. Ive, a close friend of Steve Jobs, left Apple in 2019. "I have a growing sense that everything I've learned over the last 30 years has led me to this place and to this moment," Ive told Bloomberg. Coming from the world's best device designer, that's saying a lot. OpenAI brings a lot to the table, too. After setting off the AI boom with the late 2022 release of ChatGPT, the startup has quickly built its chatbot into a mass market AI app and a household name. More than 400 million people around the world now use ChatGPT every week, OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap recently told CNBC. (For comparison, longtime Apple analyst Gene Munster estimates that there are 1.7 billion Apple device users and 2.35 billion active devices worldwide.)

OpenAI acquires Jony Ive's hardware firm, io, to create AI devices

The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco. As io merges with OpenAI, Jony and LoveFrom will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io. LoveFrom will remain independent. It became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company. And so, one year ago, Jony founded io with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan. Scott Cannon led teams on the Mac and iPad development. Evans Hankey was a senior member of the Apple design team who took over Ive's own role after he left Apple. Tang Tan led design on the iPhone for years. It takes no keen analysis to observe how proven and talented this team is at shipping impactful products. But what are they doing with OpenAI, exactly? The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco. As io merges with OpenAI, Jony and LoveFrom will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io. In other words, io will be making products, plural, for OpenAI, with an undisclosed timeline for release.

Sam Altman and Jony Ive Launch io to Build Devices for AI Era | AIM

OpenAI will acquire Ive's startup LoveFrom in a nearly $6.5 billion all-stock deal. Jony Ive, former Apple design chief, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have announced the formation of a new company, io, focused on building hardware products around artificial intelligence. The announcement marks the next phase of a two-year collaboration between Ive's design firm LoveFrom and OpenAI, which began as a private exploration and has now culminated in a formal merger. OpenAI will acquire Ive's startup in a nearly $6.5 billion all-stock deal, reported Bloomberg. The purchase, OpenAI's largest to date, gives the company a dedicated unit focused on developing AI-powered devices. The io team, led by Ive alongside Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan, includes engineers, technologists, physicists and product development experts, many of whom have worked together for decades. Jony Ive left Apple in 2019 after serving as its longtime chief design officer to launch his own design firm, LoveFrom. The company was formed a year ago to develop new types of computing products that move beyond traditional interfaces. "Computers are now seeing, thinking and understanding," Altman and Ive said in a joint statement. "Despite this unprecedented capability, our experience remains shaped by traditional products and interfaces." With io now merging into OpenAI, the combined teams aim to develop integrated AI hardware and software systems. Jony Ive and LoveFrom will assume creative and design leadership roles across both io and OpenAI. "AI is an incredible technology, but great tools require work at the intersection of technology, design, and understanding people and the world," said Altman. "No one can do this like Jony and his team; the amount of care they put into every aspect of the process is extraordinary." The collaboration stems from shared values and long-standing relationships. Ive said the work reminded him of early years in Silicon Valley. "I am reminded of a time, three decades ago, when I emigrated to America," he said. "As a designer, I was drawn to the exhilarating and innocent optimism of Silicon Valley, to collaborate with people driven to create amazing products that elevate humanity." During his tenure at Apple, Ive played a key role in shaping some of the company's most recognisable products, including the iPhone, iPod, iPad and MacBook Air. He also contributed to the design of Apple Park, the company's headquarters in Cupertino, which opened in 2019 after years of planning that began in 2004. Reflecting on the journey so far, Ive added, "I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this moment. While I am both anxious and excited about the responsibility of the substantial work ahead, I am so grateful for the opportunity to be part of such an important collaboration." OpenAI and io have not disclosed specific product plans, but said their work is centred on building tools that support learning, creativity and exploration.

OpenAI is buying Jony Ive's secretive device start-up in a $10b deal

Los Angeles | OpenAI will acquire the AI device start-up co-founded by Apple veteran Jony Ive in a nearly $US6.5 billion ($10.1 billion) all-stock deal, joining forces with the legendary designer to make a push into hardware. The purchase - the largest in OpenAI's history - will provide the company with a dedicated unit for developing AI-powered devices. Acquiring the secretive start-up, named io, also will secure the services of Ive and other former Apple designers who were behind iconic products such as the iPhone.

OpenAI recruits legendary iPhone designer Jony Ive to work on AI hardware in $6.5B deal

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- OpenAI has recruited Jony Ive, the designer behind Apple's iPhone, to lead a new hardware project for the artificial intelligence company that makes ChatGPT. OpenAI said it is acquiring io, a product and engineering company co-founded by Ive, in a deal valued at nearly $6.5 billion. OpenAI said its CEO Sam Altman had been "quietly" collaborating since 2023 with Ive and his design firm, LoveFrom. Ive worked at Apple for over two decades and is known for his work on iconic iPhone, iMac and iPad designs. Ive was Apple's chief design officer before leaving the company in 2019 to start his own design firm. In a joint letter posted on OpenAI's website Wednesday, Ive and Altman said it "became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company." That's when Ive co-founded io with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan. OpenAI said Ive will not become an OpenAI employee and his design collective, LoveFrom, will remain independent but "will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io." Both OpenAI and Ive's design firm are based in San Francisco. Leading the new io division for OpenAI will be longtime executive Peter Welinder, who led robotics research in the startup's early years and more recently has been vice president of its "new product explorations" team that delves into hardware, robotics and other early stage research. -- -- -- The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP's text archives.

OpenAI's $6.5B deal brings Apple's legendary designer Jony Ive onboard

OpenAI has acquired io, a startup led by former Apple design chief Jony Ive, in an all-equity deal valued at $6.5 billion. As part of the arrangement announced Wednesday, Ive and his design firm, LoveFrom, will lead OpenAI's creative and design work. "Thrilled to be partnering with Jony, I think he's the greatest designer in the world," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared on X (formerly Twitter). "Excited to try and create a new generation of AI-powered computers." "AI is an incredible technology, but great tools require work at the intersection of technology, design, and understanding people and the world. No one can do this like Jony and his team; the amount of care they put into every aspect of the process is extraordinary," Altman said. "I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this moment. While I am both anxious and excited about the responsibility of the substantial work ahead, I am so grateful for the opportunity to be part of such an important collaboration. The values and vision of Sam and the teams at OpenAI and io are a rare inspiration." -Jony Ive Video credit: Sam Altman Altman's post included a link to a tweet from Ive, which read: "Excited to be partnering with OpenAI to explore new creative avenues. Looking forward to this." The deal signifies OpenAI's investment in design as it develops new consumer-facing products and interfaces. Details regarding the structure of the collaboration and the specific projects LoveFrom will be involved in remain limited.

OpenAI plans to ship 100 million pocket-sized AI devices for everyday use

Sam Altman didn't specify how the new devices would operate or what they would look like. OpenAI is planning to develop AI "companion" devices that will integrate artificial intelligence capabilities with everyday life, potentially opening the door to a new high-tech innovation used alongside laptops and smartphones. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he and designer Jony Ive are developing these secret devices for mass consumption, with plans to ship 100 million units upon launch. Ives joined OpenAI after his startup, io, was acquired by Altman's company in a $6.5 billion deal, the Journal reported on May 21. Neither Altman nor Ives specified what these companion devices would look like or how they would operate. Ives simply referred to them as a "new design movement" that would be similar to Apple's family of hardware and software integrations. OpenAI has raised billions of dollars from investors, who view the company as a stalwart in the AI industry following the overwhelming success of its ChatGPT large language model (LLM). As of May, ChatGPT had nearly 800 million weekly active users, according to industry data. These usage trends were behind OpenAI's massive $157 billion valuation as of October 2024 -- a figure that nearly doubled to $300 billion by March 2025. Related: Microsoft and OpenAI renegotiate investment deal: Report In addition to its secretive companion devices, OpenAI's ambitions extend to social media, where the company plans to take on Elon Musk's X and Mark Zuckerberg's Meta platforms, according to an April 15 report by The Verge. The new social media platform will reportedly combine ChatGPT's image generation capabilities with a social media feed similar to X's. It's unclear whether the new social media platform would launch as a standalone product or be incorporated into ChatGPT. The blend between AI and social media has also bled into the blockchain industry, with several startups utilizing these technologies to build AI agents, LLM tools and decentralized social media networks. As Cointelegraph reported, Validation Cloud recently deployed an LLM on the Hedera network, giving decentralized finance users the ability to query blockchain data more easily.

OpenAI recruits legendary iPhone designer to work on AI hardware in $6.5B deal

SAN FRANCISCO -- OpenAI has recruited Jony Ive, the designer behind Apple's iPhone, to lead a new hardware project for the artificial intelligence company that makes ChatGPT. OpenAI said it is acquiring io, a product and engineering company co-founded by Ive, in a deal valued at nearly $6.5 billion. OpenAI said its CEO Sam Altman had been "quietly" collaborating since 2023 with Ive and his design firm, LoveFrom. Ive worked at Apple for over two decades and is known for his work on iconic iPhone, iMac and iPad designs. Ive was Apple's chief design officer before leaving the company in 2019 to start his own design firm. In a joint letter posted on OpenAI's website Wednesday, Ive and Altman said it "became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company." That's when Ive co-founded io with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan. OpenAI said Ive will not become an OpenAI employee and his design collective, LoveFrom, will remain independent but "will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io." Both OpenAI and Ive's design firm are based in San Francisco. Leading the new io division for OpenAI will be longtime executive Peter Welinder, who led robotics research in the startup's early years and more recently has been vice president of its "new product explorations" team that delves into hardware, robotics and other early stage research. The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP's text archives.

OpenAI Is Buying Former Apple Design Chief Jony Ive's New Company for $6.5 Billion. Here's Why

OpenAI is shelling out $6.5 billion for Jony Ive's one-year-old startup, which is called io. The purpose of the deal is to try to create the best gadgets to house artificial general intelligence -- or as Altman said in a video released with a Wednesday announcement, to "let people use AI to create all sorts of wonderful things." Although Ive and Altman haven't shared details on the hardware, whatever form it ultimately takes likely won't look like another iPhone. "AI is an incredible technology, but great tools require work at the intersection of technology, design, and understanding people and the world," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement. "No one can do this like Jony and his team; the amount of care they put into every aspect of the process is extraordinary." Ive is a British-born designer, credited for working on some of Apple's most iconic products, including the Apple Watch, iMac, iPhone, and iPod, among others. Ive left Apple in 2019, but his creative collective LoveFrom began working with Altman and OpenAI two years ago. Last year, Ive founded io, together with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tang Tan, and began gathering a team of engineers, technologists, researchers, and product development and manufacturing experts in an effort to develop "products that inspire, empower and enable," according to an announcement. Although LoveFrom will remain independent, the collective and Ive will oversee design and creative responsibilities at OpenAI, The Wall Street Journal reported. "I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this moment," Ive said in a statement. "While I am both anxious and excited about the responsibility of the substantial work ahead, I am so grateful for the opportunity to be part of such an important collaboration. The values and vision of Sam and the teams at OpenAI and io are a rare inspiration."

OpenAI buys iPhone designer Jony Ive's hardware startup, names him creative head

Mark Zuckerberg's technology conglomerate Meta is set to launch a standalone artificial intelligence app that will rival OpenAI's ChatGPT. The Meta AI App is set to be released in the latter quarter of 2025, with the company hoping it will become a leader in the field by the end of the year. OpenAI is buying Jony Ive's startup io Products and will bring the chief designer of early iPhones on board as creative head to develop devices tailored for the generative artificial intelligence era. LoveFrom, the design firm founded by Ive after leaving Apple, has been working with OpenAI for two years on generative AI devices - an area where startups have stumbled due to high computing demands, including flops such as Humane's AI Pin. With Ive leading design, OpenAI aims to pair the technology behind its popular ChatGPT chatbot with the product design expertise that made devices such as the iPhone bestsellers. The companies did not disclose the financial details of the deal for io, which Ive co-founded a year ago. "The products that we're using to deliver and connect us to unimaginable technology. They're decades old, yeah, and so it's just common sense to at least think surely there's something beyond these legacy products we have," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Ive said in a video posted on OpenAI's blog. Altman said they had a prototype of a device without giving further details, but called it "the coolest piece of technology the world will have ever seen". Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It's shares fell more than 2% on the news. The iPhone maker has been slow to roll out Apple Intelligence, a set of features with access to ChatGPT, with several advanced AI tools available on competing Android smartphones. "OpenAI is interested in owning the next hardware platform so they don't have to sell their products through Apple iOS or Google's Android," D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria said. "This is the same ambition Meta has with the Quest goggles and Meta Ray Bans." A few companies such as Humane AI and Rabbit have tried to build bespoke devices for the AI era. However, Humane AI, founded by a former Apple executives, struggled with its AI Pin device, which faced criticism for battery life, heat issues, limited functionality and high costs. HP acquired Humane AI's assets, including its AI platform Cosmos, intellectual property and technical talent for $116 million, effectively discontinuing the AI Pin product. Rabbit, on the other hand, has sold more than 100,000 of r1 devices, but reviewers have said functionality remains limited when compared with smartphones.

OpenAI Recruits Legendary IPhone Designer Jony Ive to Work on AI Hardware in $6.5B Deal

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- OpenAI has recruited Jony Ive, the designer behind Apple's iPhone, to lead a new hardware project for the artificial intelligence company that makes ChatGPT. OpenAI said it is acquiring io, a product and engineering company co-founded by Ive, in a deal valued at nearly $6.5 billion. OpenAI said its CEO Sam Altman had been "quietly" collaborating since 2023 with Ive and his design firm, LoveFrom. Ive worked at Apple for over two decades and is known for his work on iconic iPhone, iMac and iPad designs. Ive was Apple's chief design officer before leaving the company in 2019 to start his own design firm. In a joint letter posted on OpenAI's website Wednesday, Ive and Altman said it "became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company." That's when Ive co-founded io with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan. OpenAI said Ive will not become an OpenAI employee and his design collective, LoveFrom, will remain independent but "will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io." Both OpenAI and Ive's design firm are based in San Francisco. -- -- -- The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP's text archives. Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Jony Ive and OpenAI Said to Launch AI Device With Cameras in 2027

Its assembly and shipping will likely occur in Vietnam, not China Following the acquisition of former Apple designer Jony Ive's artificial intelligence (AI) hardware startup io by Sam Altman's OpenAI on Wednesday, information has surfaced about the AI device these two companies might be developing. As per an industry analyst, it is currently in a prototype phase with a size slightly larger than the failed Humane's Ai Pin, but it may still be as "elegant" as an iPod Shuffle. The device is slated to enter mass production in 2027, while its assembly and shipping may occur outside of China to mitigate geopolitical risks. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), TF Securities International analyst Ming-Chi Kuo states Jony Ive and OpenAI's new AI device currently has a prototype which is slightly larger in size than Ai Pin, Humane's contextual computer and the wearable device. It could be as compact as an iPod Shuffle, with a design equally as "elegant". However since it is in the prototype phase, its final design and specifications are subject to change. Rumoured design of the AI device by Jony Ive and OpenAI Photo Credit: X/ Ben Geskin The AI device may be equipped with cameras and microphones for environmental detection, which may prove to be particularly useful when the AI device is worn around the neck, providing contextual awareness about the wearer's surroundings. While it will not feature a display, the device is said to connect to smartphones and PCs, taking advantage of their computational power and display capabilities. Kuo says Jony Ive's io and OpenAI will kick off the mass production of the AI device in 2027. Its assembly and shipping could take place outside China amidst the geopolitical challenges and tariff wars between the country and the US. Vietnam is said to be the likely location for its assembly. As per previous reports, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has already teased the device to the company's employees. It would be able to rest in the user's pocket or on their desk, apart from becoming an AI neckpiece. Altman reportedly clarified that the AI device is not a pair of glasses, with Jony Ive also being skeptical about building a wearable AI product. It is said to be a third core device that a person would put on their desk after a MacBook Pro and an iPhone.

OpenAI to Acquire iPhone Designer Jony Ive's AI Startup in $6.5 Billion Deal

Microsoft (MSFT)-backed ChatGPT maker OpenAI announced plans on Wednesday to acquire io, the artificial intelligence startup launched by former Apple (AAPL) design head Jony Ive. The all-stock deal is valued at just under $6.5 billion, with OpenAI paying $5 billion after accounting for its existing stake in the company. The companies said in a Wednesday blog post that the "creative collective" started by Ive, LoveFrom, started collaborating with OpenAI two years ago. "It became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company," Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in the post. "As io merges with OpenAI, Jony and LoveFrom will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and ios," they said, with plans to debut their first product next year. Altman said on social media Wednesday that the companies aim to "try to create a new generation of AI-powered computers."

'The Coolest Piece of Technology the World Has Ever Seen': OpenAI Is Acquiring Former Apple Designer Jony Ive's Startup for $6.4 Billion

Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are collaborating on new AI-powered technology that could move consumers away from screens. OpenAI is buying io, an AI device startup founded by iPhone designer Jony Ive, in a $6.5 billion all-stock deal as OpenAI attempts to define the AI-powered devices market. OpenAI acquired a 23% stake in io last year and invested in the startup at that time. The acquisition is the largest in OpenAI's history and was announced on Wednesday, mere weeks after OpenAI agreed to buy AI-assisted coding tool Windsurf for about $3 billion. The deal is intended to spark a new generation of products for a future where AI technology attains or surpasses human intelligence. As part of the acquisition, Ive and his team of about 55 engineers, designers, and researchers will join OpenAI in creative and design roles that allow them to shape AI devices for consumers. They will build hardware that helps people interact with ChatGPT more intuitively, without having to go on a web browser or an app on their phones. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Ive have been collaborating for two years on a secretive project to move people beyond screens and into other types of AI-powered devices. The Wall Street Journal reports that the two have been considering AI headphones and other gadgets with cameras. Related: Saying 'Please' and 'Thank You' to ChatGPT Costs OpenAI 'Tens of Millions of Dollars' In a release video on Wednesday announcing the deal, Altman called Ive "the deepest thinker of anyone I've ever met," and Ive complimented Altman in turn, calling him "a visionary." "I think we have the opportunity here to completely reimagine what it means to use a computer," Altman said in the video. While both were quiet about the details of a family of new AI products, they teased that the products were groundbreaking and would arrive sometime next year. Altman went as far as to call one unnamed product he interacted with "the coolest piece of technology the world has ever seen." Related: These Are the Most (and Least) Biased AI Models, According to a New Study Ive started working at Apple in 1992 and played a crucial role in designing the iPhone, iPad, iMac, and other Apple products. He left in 2019 to create his own design firm, LoveFrom, which has since landed deals with Airbnb and Ferrari. Altman has explored AI devices before. In 2020, he invested in the startup Humane, which developed an Ai Pin that fell flat with consumers due to overheating issues and a lagging interface. OpenAI reported last month that ChatGPT had 500 million global weekly users.

OpenAI to Acquire iPhone Designer Jony Ive's Year-old Startup for $6.5B

OpenAI and legendary designer Jony Ive team up to create a new category of A.I.-first consumer devices. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman isn't content with smartphones or laptops as the primary interfaces for A.I. in daily life. Good thing he has Jony Ive, the famed designer behind the iPhone, to help imagine what comes next. In its largest acquisition to date, OpenAI will buy out Ive's year-old hardware startup, LoveFrom's io, in a $6.5 billion deal. The merger, announced today (May 21), brings together Altman and Ive's shared vision to create "a new family of products" built specifically for A.I., according to a blog post from OpenAI. Sign Up For Our Daily Newsletter Sign Up Thank you for signing up! By clicking submit, you agree to our <a href="http://observermedia.com/terms">terms of service</a> and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime. See all of our newsletters "I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this moment," said Ive, who will take on design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io via his design firm LoveFrom but remain independent from the A.I. company, in a statement. "While I am both anxious and excited about the responsibility of the substantial work ahead, I am so grateful for the opportunity to be part of such an important collaboration." Ive was first introduced to OpenAI after his son began experimenting with ChatGPT, he shared in a video accompanying the announcement. That curiosity led to a meeting with Altman, where the two began envisioning new hardware better suited to A.I. -- a collaboration that inspired Ive to found io in 2024. The startup was co-founded by Ive, who left Apple in 2019, along with several former Apple colleagues including Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan. All are expected to join OpenAI with io's 55-person team, reporting to OpenAI's vice president of product, Peter Welinder. The company also received early backing from Emerson Collective, the investment firm founded by Laurene Powell Jobs. Though Ive is known for shaping Apple's minimalist design language -- from the iMac and iPad to the iPhone -- both he and Altman stress that their new project is not just another sleek gadget. Instead, they aim to rethink the way we interact with technology. The future device, they say, will be less clunky than a laptop and less screen-focused than a smartphone. "What it means to use technology can change in a profound way," said Altman, adding that he hopes to "bring some of the delight, wonder and creative spirit that I first felt using an Apple Computer 30 years ago." Details about the device remain under wraps. This isn't OpenAI's first foray into consumer hardware -- the company previously integrated its models into Humane's $699 wearable pin, which ultimately failed to gain traction. The startup shut down operations shortly after the product's launch. Still, Altman is already enthusiastic about what's to come. According to OpenAI's video, Ive recently gave him a prototype to test at home. "I think it is the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen," said Altman.

OpenAI to buy iPhone designer Jony Ive's AI devices startup

OpenAI is set to acquire Jony Ive's AI devices startup, io, in a significant $6.4 billion all-equity deal, marking its largest acquisition to date. This move follows OpenAI's recent agreement to purchase Windsurf for $3 billion, amidst increasing competition from Google, Anthropic, and xAI.OpenAI said it will buy Jony Ive's AI devices startup io in an all-equity deal for $6.4 billion, including its current stake in the company, according to a report by the Financial Times. Ive and the his creative collective Loveform started collaborating with OpenAI and Sam Altman two years ago, the ChatGPT maker said in a statement. The startup io was created to one year ago to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products. This family of products will allow people to use AI "to create all sorts of wonderful things", Altman said in a video message. The clip indicates that io is ready with the prototype of its first product, which has also won Altman's approval. The AI major stated that io will merging with OpenAI, while Ive and LoveFrom will take on "deep creative and design responsibilities across OpenAI and io," OpenAI said. Ive is popular for designing iconic Apple products including the iPod, iPad, iPhone and MacBook Pro. His Loveform has worked with Ferrari and Airbnb in the past. This is OpenAI's largest acquisition so far and comes days after it agreed to buy Windsurf, an artificial intelligence-assisted coding tool, for about $3 billion. This deal is in the backdrop of the rising trend of AI-backed coding assistants. OpenAI itself launched the research preview of its own cloud-based coding assistant called Codex last Friday. Meanwhile, the company is facing mounting challenges in AI from Google, Anthropic and Elon Musk's xAI. During the Google I/O 2025, the internet major unleashed another wave of artificial intelligence technology to accelerate a year-long makeover of its search engine, including an AI Mode for the US market. Also Read: Key takeaways from Google I/O 2025: Gemini, Search in focus OpenAI recently finalised a $40 billion financing led by SoftBank Group Corp., which values the company at $300 billion. The AI company is also working restructuring itself into a public benefit corporation, scrapping the idea to transform into a for-profit entity. It is renegotiating a multibillion-dollar deal with Microsoft to allow the ChatGPT maker an IPO in the future, while protecting the software giant's access to cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) models.

OpenAI Inks $6.5 Billion Deal to Buy Apple Veteran's Co

OpenAI will acquire the AI device startup co-founded by Apple Inc. veteran Jony Ive in a nearly $6.5 billion all-stock deal, joining forces with the legendary designer to make a push into hardware. The purchase -- the largest in OpenAI's history -- will provide the company with a dedicated unit for developing AI-powered devices. Acquiring the secretive startup, named io, also will secure the services of Ive and other former Apple designers who were behind iconic products such as the iPhone. "I have a growing sense that everything I've learned over the last 30 years has led me to this place and to this moment," Ive said in a joint interview with OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman. "It's a relationship and a way of working together that I think is going to yield products and products and products." For the British-born designer, the move marks a high-profile return to a consumer technology industry he helped pioneer. Working for years alongside Steve Jobs, he crafted the look and feel of the modern smartphone, in addition to the iPod, iPad and Apple Watch. He left Apple in 2019. When Ive departed Apple, CEO Tim Cook pitched the idea that the two parties would remain collaborators. But they never released a product together after Ive's exit. And now the designer is embarking on a new collaboration with Altman, who he called a "rare visionary." Ive was once described by Jobs as his "spiritual partner," and his new stint designing rival technology products could be seen as a bad omen for Apple -- a company already struggling to compete in AI. In the interview, Altman said Jobs would be "damn proud" of Ive's latest move. OpenAI is going to create a product at a level of quality that "has never happened before in consumer hardware," Altman said. "AI is such a big leap forward in terms of what people can do that it needs a new kind of computing form factor to get the maximum potential out of it," he said. Apple shares dropped as much as 2.3% in New York on Wednesday. They had been down 17% this year through Tuesday's close. As part of the deal, OpenAI is paying $5 billion in equity for io. The balance of the nearly $6.5 billion stems from a partnership reached in the fourth quarter of last year that involved OpenAI acquiring a 23% stake in io. Separately, OpenAI's startup fund also invested in Ive's company at that time. Billionaire philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs is an io backer as well, through her firm the Emerson Collective. Other investors include Sutter Hill Ventures, Thrive Capital, Maverick Capital and SV Angel. Altman doesn't have equity in io, OpenAI said. The deal is expected to be completed this summer, pending regulatory approvals. The takeover of io will provide OpenAI with about 55 hardware engineers, software developers and manufacturing experts -- a team that will build what Ive and Altman expect to be a family of devices. The two executives had already been exploring some early ideas for about two years, they said. The pair expects their first device to be a truly novel type of product. "People have an appetite for something new, which is a reflection on a sort of an unease with where we currently are," Ive said, referring to products available today. Ive and Altman's first devices are slated to debut in 2026. When he left Apple six years ago, Ive started the firm LoveFrom, a collective of designers and engineers. The staff includes veterans of Apple's hardware and software departments, as well as friends of Ive and other collaborators. He then co-founded io last year with Apple alumni Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan. Hankey was Ive's successor at Apple and remained at the company until 2023, while Tan led iPhone and Apple Watch product design until 2024. Cannon worked at Apple before co-creating the once-popular email app Mailbox, which was acquired by Dropbox Inc. At io, the group set out to develop, engineer and manufacturer a collection of products for an era of artificial general intelligence -- the point when technology achieves humanlike cognitive abilities. The team will now continue that mission at OpenAI, becoming a threat to the very devices that the designers helped create. That adds to the challenges of Apple, which has fallen behind its Silicon Valley peers in artificial intelligence. The company's AI platform, released last year, lacks the capabilities of rival systems and relies in part on OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot to fill in the gaps. Still, Ive and Altman don't see the iPhone disappearing anytime soon. "In the same way that the smartphone didn't make the laptop go away, I don't think our first thing is going to make the smartphone go away," Altman said. "It is a totally new kind of thing." "The phone, as it currently is, is a remarkable general-purpose device," Ive said, adding that people will connect with AI in "very new ways." OpenAI, founded a decade ago as a research organization, became a driving force in AI with the release of ChatGPT in 2022. The company's valuation has swelled to $300 billion, and it's looking to expand its reach through acquisitions. OpenAI is working on other transactions, such as a $3 billion deal for AI coding software company Windsurf. OpenAI also shook up its management ranks this month, with the San Francisco-based company appointing Instacart chief Fidji Simo as the CEO of applications. She reports directly to Altman, allowing him to focus on the broader strategy. Hankey, who will become an OpenAI employee along with Tan and Cannon, said that ChatGPT's debut prompted a realization that hardware technology would have to change. "A number of us looked at each other and said, 'This is probably the most incredible technology of our career,'" she said in an interview. While Ive and LoveFrom will remain independent, they will take over design for all of OpenAI, including its software. Altman said his first conversations with Ive weren't about hardware, but rather about how to improve the interface of ChatGPT. "We are obviously still in the terminal phase of AI interactions," said Altman, 40. "We have not yet figured out what the equivalent of the graphical user interface is going to be, but we will." LoveFrom has a number of former Apple designers who helped create the look of the Mac and iPhone operating systems, including Bas Ording, Mike Matas and Chris Wilson, Ive said. They could help redesign OpenAI's app for a new generation of consumers. LoveFrom will continue its existing relationships with customers like Ferrari NV and Airbnb Inc. but won't take on major new clients. The new hardware team within OpenAI will be overseen by Peter Welinder, who will report to Altman as a product vice president. Ive said ChatGPT was initially put on his radar by one of his twin sons, Charlie, and he immediately knew he had to meet Altman after using it. The new team at OpenAI will work at io's existing workspace in Jackson Square, a neighborhood in San Francisco, and OpenAI's current offices. "I have felt that my most important and useful work is ahead," Ive said, adding that he's been "training" for this moment. He compares the experience to Apple in the late 1990s and early 2000s, before the iPod and iPhone. "I'm just really, really grateful we all found each other." Ive and Altman wouldn't elaborate on what hardware products they are working on, but they will be entering a market in its infancy. Meta Platforms Inc., the owner of Facebook and Instagram, is perhaps the most notable maker of AI devices. It sells popular Ray-Ban smart glasses that use cameras and microphones to provide context about the surrounding environment. There have been public failures as well, such as the Humane Ai Pin and the Rabbit r1 personal assistant device. "Those were very poor products," said Ive, 58. "There has been an absence of new ways of thinking expressed in products." Tan, who was central to developing every version of the iPhone within Apple's hardware engineering department, said the new team isn't tied to a "legacy" and will have an opportunity to "rethink this space." Still, actually delivering a product will take a while. "It will be worth the wait," Altman said. "It's a crazy, ambitious thing to make."

Jony Ive joins OpenAI. A look back at the iconic products that defined his design legacy

Jony Ive is behind some of the most iconic designs from Apple. He started his own brand LoveFrom. His startup was recently acquired by OpenAIIn a move that bridges the worlds of iconic industrial design and cutting-edge artificial intelligence, Sir Jony Ive has officially joined Sam Altman's OpenAI following the acquisition of his design firm LoveFrom. Renowned for shaping the modern era of consumer technology through his legendary work at Apple, Ive is now set to spearhead a new frontier: designing next-generation AI hardware. But before we get a glimpse into his new work, let's have a quick history lesson on what iconic devices has Johny designed. Jony Ive's first major hit at Apple was the colorful iMac G3. Breaking away from the beige, boxy PCs of the 1990s, the iMac featured a translucent plastic shell in vibrant colors like Bondi Blue. It was an all-in-one computer with the monitor and CPU integrated, designed to make computers less intimidating and more friendly to the average consumer. Its simplicity and visual appeal helped rejuvenate Apple's brand image. With the iPod, Ive pioneered minimalism in consumer electronics. The iconic white body, polished metal back, and simple scroll wheel interface made it a cultural icon. It was the perfect example of form meeting function. Ive's design made the iPod instantly recognizable and incredibly easy to use, helping it dominate the MP3 player market and redefining portable music. Possibly the most transformative product in tech history, the original iPhone was a radical departure from phones of the time. Ive designed a sleek, buttonless front with just one home button and a multi-touch glass screen. Its minimalist aesthetic hid complex technology beneath a seamless user interface. The iPhone became the blueprint for nearly all smartphones that followed. Unveiled dramatically by Steve Jobs pulling it out of a manila envelope, the MacBook Air set a new standard for laptops. Ive's wedge-shaped, ultra-thin design was not just stylish but highly functional. It focused on portability without compromising too much power, influencing the future of notebooks and ultrabooks industry-wide. Ive's iPad design further pushed the limits of minimalist design. A sleek, touch-dominated slab with clean edges and intuitive UI, the iPad blended media consumption, productivity, and portability in one device. It also marked Apple's deepening integration of hardware and software into a seamless experience. As Apple's head of both hardware and software design, Ive led a major redesign of Apple's mobile OS. iOS 7 moved away from skeuomorphic textures and shadows toward a flat, clean, and vibrant design language. It was controversial at launch but set the tone for modern mobile UI trends with a focus on clarity and depth through layers, blur, and motion. Merging fashion and technology, the Apple Watch was Jony Ive's vision of a wearable device that didn't look like a gadget. It featured a square face with rounded edges, customizable straps, and a "Digital Crown" for navigation. Ive wanted it to feel like a personal object -- less tech, more lifestyle. It helped Apple define the modern smartwatch category. Ive co-designed Apple's futuristic headquarters, Apple Park, with architecture firm Foster + Partners. The vast circular building features curved glass panels, natural materials, and extensive landscaping. It reflected Apple's design ethos of simplicity, openness, and environmental consciousness on an architectural scale. It will be interesting to see what he does with OpenAI. The hardware from AI centric companies have been underwhelming so far. Both RabitR1 and HumaneAI Pin were panned by users and critics alike for the considering lapses in execution.

Sam Altman's partnership with Jony Ive furthers OpenAI's hardware ambitions

Ive and the his creative collective Loveform started collaborating with OpenAI and Sam Altman two years ago, the ChatGPT maker said in a statement. The startup io was created to one year ago to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products.OpenAI is entering hardware territory with its acquisition of former Apple design chief Jony Ive's stealthy artificial intelligence (AI) startup io in a $6.5 billion deal. Altman is working with Ive, the famous designer behind Apple's iPhone and other products, to build devices that are made specifically for AI. By doing this, Altman seems to be building a fully integrated AI company. That means his company will be involved in every part of how AI works, from developing models, to specialised AI chips and data centres, to hardware. Taking shots In the video announcement of the deal, Ive took a shot at Apple saying that the products we use today are "decades old" and it is common sense to build something beyond "legacy products". Altman also referred to the iPhone and MacBook in the video, saying they are stellar but that a prototype AI-hardware product developed by io is the "coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen". Rival watch Altman is creating an all-in-one AI behemoth as OpenAI goes up against tech giants well-positioned to do the same. Google has succeeded in creating a vertically integrated AI company (with Pixel as the hardware). Microsoft and Amazon are working on the same as well. However, Apple, despite integrating AI across its hardware products, appears to be lagging in the AI-specific hardware space, where its market dominance had positioned it to be a likely first mover. The iPhone maker had also struck a partnership with OpenAI to upgrade Siri, its voice assistant, which has faced setbacks recently.

Your next best friend might be an AI: Are Sam Altman and Jony Ive planning a 100-million-device revolution to end screens forever?

HR team terminated after manager's CV gets auto-rejected; netizens say AI 'should never replace human judgment'In a revelation that's already stirring waves across the tech world and beyond, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has outlined his vision for a future, reportedly packed with 100 million pocket-sized, screen-free AI companions -- smart devices designed to intimately understand, anticipate, and possibly even shadow their users' daily lives. The concept is so radical, so eerily futuristic, it sounds like something straight out of Black Mirror. But this isn't science fiction -- it's happening, and Altman is deadly serious. Teaming up with legendary Apple designer Jony Ive, the man responsible for the sleek elegance of the iPhone and MacBook, Altman is engineering what he calls the "third core" tech product -- something that belongs on your desk right next to your iPhone and MacBook. This isn't just another gadget. It's a revolution in personal computing. Described as screen-free and contextually aware as per reports, the mysterious device will tune itself to its environment, picking up on subtle cues and learning how to be the most helpful, seamless digital assistant you've ever encountered. It won't be something you scroll through or tap -- it will simply know. Altman isn't thinking small. According to a leaked internal call, he's instructed his team to prepare for the fastest rollout of 100 million devices ever attempted. With backing from a $6.5 billion plan to acquire Ive's design company, io, OpenAI is positioning itself to enter the trillion-dollar club. The ambition? Not just to innovate, but to dominate. And while we don't yet know if the device will record conversations or monitor behavior in real-time, what's clear is that Altman and Ive believe traditional screen-based interaction is on its way out. Their goal? To wean people off screens entirely and transition them to a new form of ambient, invisible computing. Expected to launch by late 2026, the device remains cloaked in secrecy. Even its core functions are under wraps, protected against competitive espionage. But the hype is undeniable. In a previous New York Times profile, it was suggested that generative AI might finally be powerful enough to justify an entirely new category of hardware -- one that redefines our relationship with technology. Altman's promise? That this AI companion will ship faster than any tech innovation of its kind -- an audacious claim, but one in line with OpenAI's recent aggressive pace.

ET Explainer: Jony Ive & Sam Altman threaten to take a bite out of Apple

Jony Ive, famed designer of the iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro and more, is collaborating with Sam Altman's OpenAI. The ChatGPT maker acquired Ive's startup io for $6.4 billion to create AI-powered consumer devices. This partnership positions OpenAI as a competitor to Apple. Altman and Ive envision a new generation of technology, with the first prototype already under testing and expected to be made public next year. British-American designer Jony Ive, famed for designing Apple's most prominent products, is now entering an expansive tie-up with OpenAI as it ventures into AI hardware. The ChatGPT-maker announced its acquisition of Ive's startup io for a $6.4 billion all-equity deal. Working closely with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Ive seeks to pioneer the next generation of technology for the AI-first world we are entering. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs called him his "spiritual partner" and said he was "wickedly intelligent". But who is Ive and what does this partnership entail? ET explains. What is Jony Ive known for? Ive was a consumer tech design pioneer, instrumental in creating Apple's most iconic designs from the iPhone to the iPad and the Macboook. Ive joined Apple in 1992 and became the senior vice president of industrial design by the late 1990s under Apple founder Steve Jobs. He was the company's chief design officer from 2015 to 2019. After leaving Apple in 2019, Ive established LoveFrom, a creative collective that has worked with companies like Ferrari and Airbnb, as well as OpenAI. How did the startup io come about? Ive's LoveFrom had been working with OpenAI behind the scenes for about two years. Meanwhile, Ive cofounded device startup io last year with other former Apple designers Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan. io has a team of around 55 engineers, scientists, researchers, physicists and product development specialists, as per reports. The startup is now merging with OpenAI to create AI-powered consumer devices. LoveFrom and Ive will spearhead creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io. What can we expect from the OpenAI deal? The duo are collaborating with the mission of "figuring out how to create a family of devices that would let people use AI to create all sorts of wonderful things", said Altman. The collaboration's work will be made public next year, OpenAI said. The first product prototype is in the works and being tested by Altman, he said in a discussion with Ive, without revealing further details. Ive said the product has "captured our imagination". Ive noted that the products that are being used to connect people with AI are decades old, and that we are now on the brink of a new generation of technology. The partnership puts OpenAI in direct competition with Apple in the consumer devices space. Apple's shares had fallen about 2% on Wednesday after the deal was announced. "I think we have the opportunity here to kind of completely reimagine what it means to use a computer," said Altman.

iPhone Designer Jony Ive Joins OpenAI to Build AI Devices

OpenAI has bought the io startup for $6.5 billion in an all-stock deal. Apple's legendary former chief designer, Jony Ive, who designed the iPhone and several iconic Apple products, is joining hands with OpenAI. Last year, Jony Ive founded an AI-focused hardware startup named "io" along with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan. Now, the io team is merging with OpenAI to "work more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco." Not only that, OpenAI says Jony Ive and his company LoveFrom "will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io." LoveFrom, led by Ive, was already collaborating with OpenAI for two years. According to Bloomberg, OpenAI has bought the io startup for $6.5 billion. OpenAI further adds that the io team has gathered "the best hardware and software engineers, the best technologists, physicists, scientists, researchers and experts in product development and manufacturing." Prior to joining OpenAI, io was working on a new "family of products", beyond traditional products and interfaces. Since AI is a new technology that can see, hear, think, and understand, OpenAI is developing AI-first hardware that bridges the gap between humans and machines. Recently, Apple senior executive Eddy Cue testified before a court in the Google search monopoly case, saying that people might not need an iPhone 10 years from now. In that context, the need for AI-powered devices is growing, and OpenAI might be able to crack it, given that it has hired Jony Ive and his team. Meanwhile, Google has also unveiled its Gemini-powered Android XR glasses.

OpenAI Buying io, The AI Hardware Startup Co-Founded By Former Apple Design Chief Jony Ive And Altman Says It Could Redefine How Computers Are Used

OpenAI has been aggressively working towards establishing itself more firmly and extending to varied domains. While the company continues to introduce new models and updates that are more advanced than its previous versions, a new development has come about that emphasizes the company's intention to go beyond software and bring AI to more hardware experiences. OpenAI is said to now be acquiring a hardware-based AI startup founded by Apple's former design chief Jony Ive, among many other key engineers to completely revolutionize how computers are used. Jony Ive has been best known for his service to Apple and helped shape its most iconic products for nearly three decades. His work cannot be ignored, which could have paved the way for one major development that has now come forward. OpenAI is buying one of the AI hardware companies, io, co-founded by Ive. According to a Bloomberg report, Jony Ive would not be joining OpenAI himself, and his design firm, LoveFrom, would continue to be independent. A deal, however, has been made of about $6.5 billion for LoveFrom to manage the design of all OpenAI products. This ranges from user experiences to software interfaces. Many other key former Apple figures would also be joining OpenAI as part of the acquisition, including Evan Hankey, Tang Tan, and Scott Cannon. This collaboration aims to release its first AI-powered hardware devices in 2026. Sam Altman and Jony Ive have been in discussion since April about the possibility of a partnership or acquisition. OpenAI shared a video of Sam Altman and Jony Ive speaking about their ambitious goal with the collaboration and how monumental this moment would be. Ive said: I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this moment. While I am both anxious and excited about the responsibility of the substantial work ahead, I am so grateful for the opportunity to be part of such an important collaboration. The values and vision of Sam and the teams at OpenAI and io are a rare inspiration. Sam Altman pointed out a prototype Jony Ive gave him of their first device to take home for testing and expressed that it was one of the most impressive pieces of technology. He further added that this is their golden opportunity to completely change and revamp what it means to use a computer. OpenAI seems to be working hard to establish itself in the hardware experience putting itself in direct competition with Apple. We are excited to see what this acquisition would bring about and how the first product of these efforts would be.

The AI-Powered Device Made By The Jony Ive & Sam Altman Tag-Team Will Reportedly Enter Mass Production In 2027; 'Current Sample' Is Slightly Larger Than The Ai Pin, But With No Display

A product previously dubbed the 'iPhone of AI' was said to be under development, with the legendary team-up of Jovy Ive and Sam Altman bringing the device to fruition. At the time, those reports could be considered hot air, but with OpenAI recently acquiring Apple's former design chief's firm, io, for $6.5 billion, these two are definitely working on something that might be nothing short of exciting and groundbreaking. According to an analyst, the unnamed AI device is said to enter mass production in 2027, and he has obtained some design details which mention that the product is slightly larger than the discontinued Ai Pin, along with other noteworthy information. Last year, a report mentioned that Sam Altman and Jony Ive were attempting to close a funding round of $1 billion to accelerate the development plans of the futuristic device. Now, TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has some insight on what this product might look like, while also stating that the mass production timeline is set for 2027. Also, despite China being the obvious region to accumulate the units to ship to other countries, Kuo comments that assembly could be shifted to Vietnam due to geopolitical reasons. As for the design, the current sample is said to be slightly larger than the Ai Pin, with the exterior reportedly 'small and exquisite as an iPod Shuffle.' Of course, it is important to note that these specifications are subject to change, and it could be a while before a commercial launch transpires. However, the current information mentions that the wearable can be worn around the neck, and it is equipped with a camera and microphone to detect the external microphone, but like the Ai Pin, it lacks a display. Considering the fate of the Ai Pin, no display on a device that could seemingly cost hundreds of dollars will be a massive deal-breaker for potentially millions. As for the remaining functionality, it can be connected to a smartphone and PC while utilizing their computing resources and displays. In short, it is suggested that this product can be tethered to elevate the user experience. Kuo notes that the acquisition announcement from OpenAI could have been a deliberate move to divert some of the attention away from the Google I/O 2025 keynote. It remains to be seen how successful this device will be, but the potent partnership of Jony Ive and Sam Altman could be something no one was prepared to see. Then again, it is essential to treat all of these details with a pinch of salt, and we shall return with more updates, so stay tuned.

OpenAI Teams Up With iPhone Designer Jony Ive As ChatGPT Maker Makes Push Into Hardware, Apple Shares Slide - Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)

Apple Inc AAPL shares are moving lower Wednesday afternoon following multiple reports that OpenAI is set to acquire Apple Veteran Jony Ive's AI device startup. What Happened: Ive will team up with OpenAI as part of a $6.5 billion all-stock deal in which the ChatGPT maker will acquire Ive's io Products, as reported by Bloomberg and others. The famous designer, best known for his work on the iPhone and other iconic Apple products, will take his AI device development work to OpenAI as the company makes a push into hardware. Ives reportedly said in an interview with OpenAI's Sam Altman that he senses everything he has learned in his legendary career has led him to this moment. Apple shares fell more than 2% on the news as OpenAI is seen as a future competitor to the iPhone maker. The report also indicates that it was thought that Apple and Ives may continue to work on product development together following Ive's departure from Apple in 2019, but a product never came of it. OpenAI will reportedly pay $5 billion for equity in io Products after the two companies reached a deal last year in which OpenAI took a 23% stake in the company. The deal is expected to be completed in the coming months pending regulatory approvals. Along with Ive, OpenAI will add about 55 of io Products' hardware engineers and software developers to the team. The planned products resulting from the tie-up are expected to be unveiled next year. Apple shares have struggled to find momentum in 2025, with shares down approximately 19% year-to-date at last check. Apple has a 52-week high of $260.10 and a 52-week low of $169.21, according to Benzinga Pro. Read Next: Competitor Analysis: Evaluating Apple And Competitors In Technology Hardware, Storage &amp; Peripherals Industry Photo: Shutterstock. AAPLApple Inc$202.68-2.02%Stock Score Locked: Edge Members Only Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Unlock RankingsEdge RankingsMomentum48.64Growth33.18Quality77.44Value8.43Price TrendShortMediumLongOverviewMarket News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

The Real Reason the OpenAI-Jony Ive Partnership Is So Strange

Jewish Rapper and Comedian Kosha Dillz Says His Film's Canceled Screening Has Been Reinstated Over three decades working in Silicon Valley, Jony Ive has shaped the shell of the iMac, designed the look of the iPod and come up with the form factor for the iPhone. Pretty much every major piece of Apple technology we touch, from the heyday of Alta Vista to today, went through Ive's hands first. No doubt such a legacy enticed Sam Altman to recruit Ive, with the OpenAI founder this week buying the former Apple designer's startup io for $6.5 billion (that's at least 130 million vintage iPod shuffles) -- then announcing, in a cringey Davis Guggenheim video, the two would be working together to create an undisclosed "family of devices" to run the apps based on OpenAI's models. io, io, it's off to Ive we go. Altman has been trying to convince investors and the public that he will change the course of civilization pretty much since he released ChatGPT thirty months ago (and really for a while before that). What do you do if you're Jobs-ishly hoping to introduce technology that everyone will use? You hire the man whose technology everyone uses. Well, that's one thing you do. The other thing you can do is create programs that people can't resist. On that score, Altman has a much shakier track record. ChatGPT garnered 100 million sign-ups in its first two months but the momentum has slowed; these days about 5% of people on the planet are active users. New "reasoning" iterations like 4o have yet to catch on, while the programmer-oriented o1 has shown no lack of problems. Meanwhile the quest for AGI slogs on, with little scientific evidence we are close to a machine intelligence matching a human's full reasoning ability anytime soon. The main factor in these systems not yet fully weaving themselves into our hourly fabric seem to have little to do with the form they take. It's true that device porn is an inevitable part of any new consumer adoption. But far more important, most industrial psychologists believe, is what they enable us to do. And for all the nibbling-around-life's-edges of the apps based on OpenAI's models (which, critically, the company mostly relies on others to develop), very little here has truly revolutionized our existence so far. There's only so many thank-you notes and wacky images you can ask an AI program to create. The evidence that it's the app not the machine is that past attempts at AI-specific devices, from the R1 Rabbit to the Humane AI Pin, have thus far flopped or gotten really bad reviews. But I think even more problematic here is that Altman is making a philosophical pivot undigestible even by his own rhetoric. AI is different than previous technological revolutions, Altman has said (correctly), because it doesn't simply change what we can do but what and how we think (or, more precisely, don't need to think). The personal-computer brought digital technology to everyday people and the Internet connected us to communities and information we otherwise wouldn't have access to. But if AI delivers on its promise -- and it remains a big if -- it will make an even more fundamental change than that, introducing a whole new intelligence to live aside us humans; it's far more akin to an alien landing on this planet than a product launch or even scientific breakthrough. As Altman himself wrote earlier this year (about AGI), this "is the beginning of something for which it's hard not to say 'this time it's different'; the economic growth in front of us looks astonishing, and we can now imagine a world where we cure all diseases, have much more time to enjoy with our families and can fully realize our creative potential." Something so pervasively existential doesn't rise or fall based on how cool your device is, and spending $6.5 billion to ensure that it comes in great packaging only makes us wonder if you lack the goods for that pervasive existentialism. You could almost feel Altman and Ive themselves grappling with this contradiction, writing in their blog post announcing the partnership, "This is an extraordinary moment. Computers are now seeing, thinking and understanding. Despite this unprecedented capability, our experience remains shaped by traditional products and interfaces." Also and on an unrelated note, it's a little weird that Microsoft didn't come up in all this. I mean, OpenAI is primarily backed by a company that makes tablets and other devices. You'd think Altman might have given Satya Nadella a call about anyone in-house he could borrow before going out and writing a check for $6.5 billion to the Apple guy. AI Agents are where Altman envisions this all going, and he may be on to something -- a kind of merging of Siri and a CAA assistant to accompany us on all of life's little journeys. The one thing he said in the Guggenheim video that landed is that an indispensably helpful application like an AI Agent requires something less clunky than a laptop, though he conveniently seemed to forget about a phone. Google hasn't, and its ChatGPT competitor Gemini, which is designed for both Androids and iPhones, seems to be making plenty of strides by integrating with the tech we already have instead of selling us one we didn't know we wanted. (In fact I almost wonder if envy that Google can bundle itself so easily with its own phones isn't a primary driver for Altman here.) Now we should be wary, in all our caution about the hype, not to fall into a kind of future-myopia on the other hand either; not many people foresaw a device in our pockets that can help us shop, date, job-hunt and gamble before Steve Jobs announced the iPhone in January 2007 either. But you could understand the appeal of making those activities, the building blocks of modern existence, a lot more portable. We've yet to figure out if a companion machine intelligence is nearly as useful or safe in the first place, let alone what packaging we want to stuff it into if it is. That isn't all to say new interfaces won't be a part of our digital future. The idea that a phone -- a bulky rectangle we read and touch -- is how we conduct our digital lives is an accident of technology or at the very least the result of just one of its many historical moments. As the world gets more multimodal -- Silicon Valley-speak for how you can talk, look or gesture instead of type -- the idea of fingers and screens will become more antiquated. Altman stands in good company with this belief. Meta's newly relaunched Ray-Ban smartglasses are an attempt to merge the cloud-based power of AI chatbots with the concrete appeal of a fashion accessory, while Apple Vision Pro similarly aims to give us immersiveness by wrapping itself around our faces instead of dropping into our hands. The quirkiest but weirdly most promising of this crop may be Samsung's "Ballie." The long-awaited robotic sphere that is finally set to hit the market this summer is a kind of home assistant that's pitched somewhere between a pet and a butler -- a personalized BB-8 to help you feed the dog, conduct your yoga session and translate your video call. But while all these help-offering non-phone products rely on AI in some form or another, they're not driven by a need to recalibrate how humanity thinks. Because those two propositions, while potentially linked, exist separately. We may or may not soon interact with technology more intimately and differently than we do now (requiring a new Ive-like design) AND AI may or may not soon assist us in ways we've never been assisted before. Even if both turn out to be true, the idea that the same company would lead both charges hardly fits with the history of the past three tech decades. IBM made computers and Microsoft gave us desktop programs for them; Apple devices are everywhere and we get on them to use Google. Of course, it's possible that one company can do both, like it's also possible I can become an award-winning chef. Nothing technically is stopping OpenAI. It's just that a company whose entire resources and raison d'etre are oriented to how machines will think for us doesn't seem best suited to crack a post-phone future that no one else has solved to date. OpenAI makes models, new ways computers can think, and needs developers to build apps on them. That's what the firm's success hinges on, not whether it can design a machine as addictive as the iPhone. You could be forgiven, given how many announcements OpenAI makes, for wondering about Altman's motivations; like a vintage Terrell Owens, who often seemed to play football to support his press-conference habit, Altman can sometimes seem to run a tech company to feed his blog-post addiction. The reality lags behind the promise. The Ive announcement fits the trend. An AI device as sleek and irresistible in 2030 as the iPhone was in 2010 sounds like a great idea, as great as astonishing economic growth and all that free time. But the machine models aren't able to give us any of that, and there's scarce evidence Sam Altman or anyone else has yet figured out how to build them so they can.

Apple Faces Uncertain Future as Jony Ive Joins Forces with OpenAI | PYMNTS.com

Apple Inc. may soon find itself navigating unfamiliar territory, as its dominance in the tech industry faces mounting pressure from rivals -- and now, from one of its most iconic former allies. According to Bloomberg, a new collaboration between OpenAI and legendary designer Jony Ive is sending shockwaves through Cupertino, raising serious questions about Apple's direction and ability to lead in the age of artificial intelligence. Ive, the design visionary behind Apple's most beloved products, is teaming up with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a partnership that could reshape the future of consumer technology. Per Bloomberg, OpenAI has agreed to acquire Ive's company, LoveFrom, for nearly $6.5 billion. As part of the agreement, Ive will oversee the design of new hardware devices being developed by OpenAI -- a major move that draws clear lines between his future work and his storied past at Apple. This development is especially striking considering Apple's recent struggles. While the company continues to boast a massive iPhone user base exceeding 2 billion and maintains dominance through its tightly integrated iOS ecosystem, its recent pace of innovation has slowed. According to Bloomberg, the last major iPhone overhaul occurred in 2020, and since then, its advancements have felt iterative rather than revolutionary. Meanwhile, Apple's progress in artificial intelligence has noticeably lagged behind competitors. While Google and Microsoft have rapidly deployed generative AI tools into their products and services, Apple has largely remained on the sidelines. This stagnation is compounded by an ongoing exodus of engineering talent and key personnel -- issues that have only intensified since Ive's departure in 2019. Related: OpenAI Acquires Jony Ive's io for $6.4B to Pioneer Post-Smartphone Devices Though Apple initially claimed that Ive would maintain a close working relationship with its leadership after his exit, that promise never materialized. Now, with Ive committed to helping OpenAI develop potentially groundbreaking hardware, the implications for Apple are stark. According to Bloomberg, this alliance could position OpenAI not only as a software innovator but as a serious contender in the consumer device market -- territory Apple has long dominated. Adding to Apple's pressure are its broader ambitions in the augmented reality space. Bloomberg reports that the company is planning to launch smart glasses by the end of next year, reminiscent of Meta's similar products. But success is far from guaranteed, especially as Apple continues to grapple with internal issues and external competition. All eyes are now on Apple's upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 9. While redesigned operating systems are expected, insiders caution against anticipating major breakthroughs in AI. For now, Apple's innovations remain rooted in legacy technologies rather than forward-looking advancements.

OpenAI Acquires Jony Ive's io for $6.4B to Pioneer Post-Smartphone Devices | PYMNTS.com

OpenAI has made a bold move into the hardware space with its $6.4 billion acquisition of io, the design-focused startup led by former Apple design chief Sir Jony Ive. The deal, which was first reported by the Financial Times, represents a significant bet on devices that could redefine how users interact with artificial intelligence. The acquisition marks OpenAI's full takeover of io, with the ChatGPT developer purchasing the remaining 77% stake in an all-equity transaction valued at $5 billion. OpenAI already held a 23% stake in the company. The transaction brings io's 55 employees under OpenAI's umbrella, although Ive himself will not join as a formal employee, according to people familiar with the matter cited by the Financial Times. OpenAI has indicated that the goal behind the deal is to develop a new category of consumer hardware for the "AGI era," referring to artificial general intelligence -- AI that can perform most tasks as well as or better than humans. "We have the opportunity here to kind of completely reimagine what it means to use a computer," said OpenAI founder Sam Altman in a video announcement. Although Jony Ive will not hold an internal role at OpenAI, he will continue to play a crucial part in shaping the company's product vision. According to Financial Times, OpenAI confirmed that Ive would take on "deep creative and design responsibilities across OpenAI and io," leveraging his extensive experience in creating groundbreaking consumer products. His design firm, LoveFrom -- which has collaborated with brands like Ferrari -- will remain independent. Related: OpenAI Eyes Chrome If DOJ Forces Google to Sell Browser, Exec Testifies Ive is best known for his influential role at Apple, where he helped design iconic products such as the iPhone, iPod, and Apple Watch over nearly three decades. After leaving the tech giant in 2019, he maintained a lower public profile while working on architectural and design projects, including a San Francisco office space in Jackson Square. The deal reflects a growing shift among tech leaders toward exploring alternatives to smartphones as the primary interface with AI. Per Financial Times, OpenAI is positioning itself at the forefront of this transition, even as other ventures have struggled. Last year, start-up Humane introduced an AI wearable pin, but the device failed to gain traction and the company was later acquired by HP. This move comes amid a broader rethinking of personal technology. In December, OpenAI entered into a partnership with Apple, integrating ChatGPT into Siri and other tools as part of Apple's AI overhaul initiative, dubbed "Apple Intelligence." While Apple is also working to update Siri, its own efforts have encountered delays. Even Apple executives have begun hinting at a post-smartphone reality. Eddy Cue, the company's services chief, recently told a U.S. court, "You may not need an iPhone 10 years from now, as crazy as it sounds."

OpenAI Acquires Former Apple Design Chief's AI Device Startup | PYMNTS.com

In a Wednesday (May 21) video, Altman and Ive talked about how their relationship began two years ago. The OpenAI CEO also said that to use ChatGPT today, a user had to turn on a computer, open a web browser, go to ChatGPT's website, type in a query and then wait for an answer. Altman believes there's a better way to access AI. "I think we have the opportunity here to kind of completely reimagine what it means to use a computer," he said. Ive, who led the design of the iPhone, iPod, iPad and Apple Watch, called Altman "a rare visionary" with whom he would like to partner. The result was io, an AI device startup that Ive created in the spring of 2024 with Apple designers Scott Cannon (who co-founded Mailbox), Evans Hankey and Tang Tan to develop a new family of products for the artificial general intelligence (AGI) era. According to a Wednesday Bloomberg report, OpenAI said it was acquiring io for just under $6.5 billion, OpenAI's largest acquisition to date. Io will become the devices division at OpenAI, led by Peter Welinder, who will report to Altman. OpenAI had reportedly considered buying the the startup in April, according to PYMNTS reporting at the time. Ive and LoveFrom, the design company he founded after leaving Apple in 2019, will take over design and creative initiatives at OpenAI but stay as an independent firm. LoveFrom is separate from io. After Ive left Apple, both said they would continue to collaborate, but nothing came from it. Now, OpenAI has stepped into the gap as Apple continues to struggle with deploying generative AI throughout its devices. In afternoon trading, shares of Apple fell 2% to $202.44. For io, Ive and the rest of his 55-person team plan to show "what they've been working on" in 2026.

OpenAI acquires Jony Ive's io for $6.5 billion to develop AI hardware

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has revealed details of a new AI hardware project being developed with former Apple designer Jony Ive. The plan includes eventually producing 100 million units of a compact device designed for everyday use. During an internal meeting, Altman told employees the initiative could be "the biggest thing we've ever done." He also confirmed that OpenAI will acquire Ive's startup, io, for $6.5 billion. A recording reviewed by The Wall Street Journal revealed Altman's belief that the acquisition could boost OpenAI's value by as much as $1 trillion. Reflecting on the collaboration, Ive described working with Altman as "profound," similar to his experience with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. The upcoming device is described as an AI assistant that can sense and understand its environment. It is small enough to be carried in a pocket or placed on a desk. Altman and Ive said the device will not function as a phone or wearable like smart glasses. Instead, it will serve as a third core device, used alongside a laptop and smartphone. Ive mentioned the beginning of a "new design movement." Altman added that the project will involve a series of devices, combining hardware and software in a unified system -- an approach similar to Apple's. The device will have cameras and microphones to detect surroundings but will not include a display. It is intended to connect to phones and computers for processing and screen use. The first version is expected to be released by the end of 2026. Altman said the goal is to reach 100 million units shipped, not all at once, but at a faster rate than any previous tech device. Ive's team is already working with suppliers to enable large-scale production. The device's final assembly is planned to take place outside China, with Vietnam being the likely location, the report added. This strategy allows OpenAI to deliver AI products directly to users rather than relying on platforms like Apple or Google. The company has reportedly told investors it does not anticipate turning a profit before 2029, with projected cumulative losses reaching $44 billion by that time. Altman pointed out that current devices restrict AI use, since people still have to open browsers and type commands manually, which he said falls short of AI's full potential. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo shared his insights on X (formerly Twitter), outlining several predictions about the device: Kuo suggested the timing of OpenAI's announcement may aim to draw attention away from Google's recent I/O event. He also sees the move as part of a growing trend toward "physical AI" -- bringing AI into everyday physical environments. He concluded with a reference to Alan Kay's well-known quote: "People who are serious about software should make their own hardware." The collaboration began roughly 18 months ago when OpenAI VP Peter Welinder started working with Ive's team. At first, io planned to develop its own device powered by OpenAI's technology. Altman later decided on a full merger, saying the device was too central to OpenAI's mission to remain separate. "If you subscribed to ChatGPT, we should just send you new computers," Altman told staff, explaining that the project aims to rethink how users interact with AI. Many details about the device remain secret as development continues. OpenAI's acquisition of io and partnership with Jony Ive mark a significant move into AI hardware. The first product is expected by 2026, with more updates to come as the project advances.

Apple's AI progress slows as Jony Ive joins OpenAI in major partnership: Report

Jony Ive's recent partnership with OpenAI has raised concerns at Apple, amid the company's loss of top design talent and struggles to keep up in artificial intelligence, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported. Jony Ive, the designer behind many of Apple's most iconic products, has teamed up with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a deal valued at nearly $6.5 billion. As part of the agreement, OpenAI is acquiring Ive's startup, io, and Ive will lead the design of new OpenAI hardware. This move places Ive, once central to Apple's success, alongside a major AI competitor. Gurman notes that although Apple continues to sell millions of iPhones and serves over 2 billion users, it has fallen behind rivals like Google and Microsoft in advancing generative AI. Since 2020, the iPhone's design has changed little, and the company is losing engineers who maintain its core products. While Apple's ecosystem remains strong and competitors such as Samsung, Google, and Meta have yet to fully capitalize on AI, Gurman emphasizes that Apple's dominant position faces increasing pressure. This deal places Ive in charge of designing OpenAI's new hardware, highlighting Apple's difficulty retaining key talent and pushing AI innovation forward. The report adds that when Ive left Apple in 2019, many expected he would remain connected with the company's leadership, but that didn't happen. Now, his close collaboration with OpenAI could widen the gap between Apple and emerging AI rivals. At the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 9, Apple plans to announce updates to its operating systems, though major AI breakthroughs are not expected. The company remains focused on refining existing products, while the OpenAI deal signals new AI-driven possibilities. Software Redesign Across Devices: Apple will launch a unified "Solarium" design across Apple TV, smartwatches, Vision Pro, and all major platforms, aiming to modernize and align the look of iOS, macOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS, and visionOS -- refining the traditional OS instead of fully shifting to AI systems. Opening Apple Intelligence to Developers: Apple plans to let developers use its own large language models to create AI-powered apps, potentially boosting App Store features. Other updates include battery optimization, new health tools, and improved Google Gemini integration with Siri. Gurman believes that although Ive and Altman's upcoming device won't directly compete with the iPhone, its success is uncertain since the market may not yet be ready to move beyond screen-based devices. As AI becomes as vital as the touchscreen was 20 years ago -- enabling instant access and voice interaction -- Apple acknowledges these changes. During a U.S. antitrust hearing, services chief Eddy Cue admitted that new technologies and competitors pose significant challenges. Gurman reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook's recent talks with Donald Trump didn't ease tariff tensions, as Trump is threatening a 25% tariff on iPhones made outside the U.S., targeting Apple's shift to India. Though the rate is lower than earlier proposals, it could still push prices up. Gurman expects Apple won't bring iPhone production back to the U.S. due to high costs and the risk of China's retaliation -- a challenge that could benefit Chinese competitors. He warns Apple's window to lead is narrowing, urging the company to accelerate its AI efforts, launch bold hardware, and deliver the next major iPhone before rivals move ahead.

Can OpenAI and Jony Ive's mystery device end a string of AI flops?

IO has won the hype, but Apple probably doesn't need to worry yet. So former Apple design chief Jony Ive just sold IO, his stealth AI hardware startup, to OpenAI before anyone knew it existed. The move was announced with a bizarre video and a black-and-white photo of Jony and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman looking like they asked the latter's GPT image generator to put them on Simon and Garfunkel's Bookends album cover. Immediately, there were headlines predicting danger for Ive's former employer. Apple's iPhones and MacBooks are about to be replaced by a revolutionary AI device, we're told. But don't blame me for being skeptical. After last year's flurry of 'alternative' hardware, we were ready to declare the AI gadget era the shortest-lived fad since NFTs until this week. Can IO really change things? In case you missed the news, OpenAI is splashing out an estimated $6.5 billion in stock to buy IO, which was founded by Ive along with fellow Apple alumni Evans Hankey (his successor as Apple's head of design), Tang Tan (the former head of iPhone and Apple Watch design) and Scott Cannon. Around 55 staff will head to OpenAI. Ive himself won't be among them, but his design company, LoveFrom, will work exclusively for OpenAI handling its design, including software. If anyone can make an AI gadget a success, it should be the team of hardware and software engineers, technologists, physicists and product design experts that IO has assembled. We're told the first IO device will launch in late 2026. But what will that look like? The polished nine-minute launch video sees Sam and Jony head to a San Francisco cafe to tell the barista about their bromance and their love for the city and very little about what they're working on. That's led to frenzied speculation about what IO will make. The Wall Street Journal cites an internal call at OpenAI in which the AI device is described as pocket-sized, screenless, aware of a user's life and surroundings and "not a pair of smart glasses". Altman has said the device is something totally new and "the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen." That's a claim as bold as Elon Musk's suggestion that the Cybertruck would also be a boat. Sam's probably right that AI requires a rethink of hardware, but the hype makes me dubious. Apple doesn't feel the need to tease experimental products. It keeps them under wraps. Even then, it still sometimes gets things wrong - Apple Intelligence spectacularly over promised and was rolled out before it was ready. The generative AI revolution inspired product designers to predict that a new form of radically different device would replace the smartphones in our pockets and the laptops in our bags. The problem is that so far they have't worked well, and people haven't seen a need for them. We really wanted to like the Rabbit R1, but our verdict in our review was that it was gimmicky gadget. It's still going, but I've not met anyone who isn't a tech journalist who;s used one. Then there was the Humane AI Pin, a small, voice-controlled AI device that was supposed to be able to answer questions but often got the answers wrong. That was also the child of former Apple employees. The company sold out to HP and was shut down less than a year after launch, leaving its server-dependent devices practically useless. Jony Ive is obviously aware of these flops. His argument in an interview with Bloomberg is that these were simply "very poor products" and that "there has been an absence of new ways of thinking". A more promising area of AI hardware exploration has been smart glasses like the Ray-Ban Meta collaboration, Brilliant Labs' Frame and, announced just this week, Google's upcoming Android XR smart glasses to be made by eyewear brands Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Apple is also rumoured to be working on Siri smart glasses. Then there are home assistants, devices like LG's annoyingly cute robot dog, AKA the Self-Driving AI Home Hub, and the SenseCAP Watcher autonomous AI assistant, which looks like a Tamagotchi but can turn your TV and lights off when you fall asleep. IO's device sounds like it could be a container for a more powerful agentic AI that accompanies you throughout the day, presumably with voice as the UI. But smartphones can also deliver AI assistance via voice UI, while also being phones (and cameras and entertainment devices, and the list goes on). A new form factor would need to provide some physical advantage. OpenAI really wants to be Apple, and Sam really wants to be the new Steve Jobs, which might be why he's brought in Jony Ive. But when Jony designed the iMac, the iPod and the iPhone, he applied exquisitely simple user-friendly design to core technologies that already worked. No matter how great IO's product is, the AI behind it needs to be up to the job. Considering that AI models can still get things so terribly wrong, it could easily be another flop that comes to market before it's ready.

Famed iPhone designer and ex-Apple exec Jony Ive joins OpenAI in...

Famed iPhone designer Jony Ive is joining OpenAI after his artificial intelligence hardware startup was acquired by the ChatGPT maker in an all-stock deal valued at nearly $6.5 billion, the company announced on Wednesday. OpenAI's acquisition of Ive's firm, called io, is the largest in the Sam Altman-led company's history. Ive is best known for closely collaborating with Apple's Steve Jobs to develop the company's most famous products. Ive, who left Apple in 2019, will "assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io" as part of the deal, according to a press release. The partnership could put OpenAI in direct competition with Apple, which is still reliant on iPhone sales for the bulk of its revenue. San Francisco-based io had already poached a pair of key ex-Apple executives, Tang Tan, who led the teams responsible for iPhone design and Apple Watch, and Evans Hankey, who took over from Ive as Apple's top designer before leaving in 2023. Both will join Ive at OpenAI. "I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this moment," Ive said in a statement. "While I am both anxious and excited about the responsibility of the substantial work ahead, I am so grateful for the opportunity to be part of such an important collaboration." Apple shares were down more than 2% in trading Wednesday, with losses accelerating after news of the collaboration surfaced. OpenAI will pay $5 billion in stock as part of the transaction. Altman's firm already held a stake in io prior to the takeover. The deal is expected to close this summer pending regulatory approval. In an interview with Bloomberg, Ive and Altman said their first product is expected to debut in 2026. A total of 55 employees, including software developers and hardware engineers, will work for OpenAI under the io umbrella. "AI is an incredible technology, but great tools require work at the intersection of technology, design, and understanding people and the world," Altman said in a statement. "No one can do this like Jony and his team; the amount of care they put into every aspect of the process is extraordinary." Prior to the deal, Altman and Ive were already collaborating on development of an AI-centric device since 2023 - though reports have differed on whether the device is best described as a smartphone, a tablet or an entirely new format. OpenAI recently secured a $300 billion valuation and is locked in heated competition with the likes of Google, Elon Musk's xAI and others to stay ahead in the race to develop advanced AI. Last month, The Information reported that OpenAI had discussed a potential "full acquisition" of Ive's firm.

OpenAI aims to begin shipping AI devices by late-2026, Altman says- WSJ By Investing.com

Investing.com-- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees that he plans to lead the company in shipping a planned AI device by at least end-2026, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. Altman told employees at the AI startup that he was targeting sales of 100 million devices, and that OpenAI was seeking to create a new class of devices as integral as a smartphone, the WSJ report said, citing a recording of a meeting between Altman and OpenAI employees. Altman's comments come just after OpenAI bought a company led by former Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) designer Jony Ive for $6.5 billion earlier this week. Altman said that the deal had the potential to add $1 trillion in value to OpenAI, the WSJ reported. Altman and Ive were reportedly aiming to create a third core device for everyday use, after a smartphone and a personal computer. The AI device will reportedly feature no screens, will not be a phone, and is not a wearable. Altman has claimed that the device will be able to rest in a user's pocket or desk, and will be capable of being fully aware of a user's surroundings and life. AI devices have so far struggled to gain traction, especially when competing with smartphones sold by companies with far deeper pockets. Offerings from Humane- a start-up that Altman had invested in- and from Rabbit Inc- largely failed to catch on, due to limitations in software and hardware. OpenAI is also burning through cash, and does not expect to generate a profit until 2029, prior reports showed. Still, building a device will likely be the only way OpenAI can reach consumers directly with its software offerings, which currently either run on smartphones or on internet browsers. The acquisition of Ive's company is aimed at this particular goal.

Kuo: OpenAI's device prototype designed by Jony Ive is neck-worn, screenless By Investing.com

Investing.com -- Shares of Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) continued to dip Thursday following OpenAI's $6.5 billion acquisition of io Products, a design startup led by former Apple designer Jony Ive. The move, seen by many as a potential long-term challenge to the iPhone, marks OpenAI's push into AI-enabled consumer hardware that could rival smartphones. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of TF International Securities offered early insight into the new device, describing it as compact and screenless, with cameras and microphones focused on environmental awareness. "Mass production is expected to start in 2027... with assembly and shipping likely occurring in Vietnam to mitigate geopolitical risk," Kuo wrote Thursday in a report based on his industry research. The prototype is reportedly larger than Humane's AI Pin but retains the minimalist appeal of an iPod Shuffle. It's designed to be worn around the neck and is expected to connect to smartphones and PCs for compute and display, representing a new model of hybrid device. Kuo interpreted the acquisition's timing as a strategic move by OpenAI to divert attention from Google's (NASDAQ:GOOGL) recent I/O developer conference. "Google's ecosystem and AI integration pose a challenge OpenAI currently struggles to address," he noted, suggesting the deal's announcement was partly about narrative control within the industry. WSJ earlier reported that Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, told employees this week that he aims to sell 100 million devices and sees the hardware as a new category, potentially as foundational as the smartphone or PC. Whether OpenAI can break through where other AI hardware startups have faltered remains uncertain, especially amid limited device functionality and market skepticism. But the acquisition signals how leading AI companies are beginning to encroach on territory long dominated by incumbents like Apple and Google, reshaping industry expectations about what post-smartphone devices might look like.

Apple stock falls amid OpenAI's acquisition of Jony Ive's startup By Investing.com

Investing.com -- Apple shares (NASDAQ:AAPL) slipped 1.7% following reports from Financial Times and Wall Street Journal that OpenAI is acquiring Jony Ive's hardware startup io Products. The move has raised concerns among investors about potential competition in consumer devices. The acquisition, valued at approximately $6.5 billion, positions OpenAI, a company co-founded by Sam Altman, to explore alternatives to smartphones as primary AI access points. Jony Ive, renowned for his role in designing iconic Apple products such as the iPhone and MacBook, left Apple in 2019 and later founded io Products. Ive's departure from Apple to lead creative and design efforts at OpenAI, particularly in the development of consumer devices that aim to shift users away from traditional screens, has evidently caused unease among Apple's investors. OpenAI's partnership with Apple, which saw the integration of ChatGPT into Apple's voice assistant and writing tools in December, was a significant move in what was dubbed the "Apple Intelligence" overhaul. However, the recent acquisition suggests a potential shift in the competitive landscape, with OpenAI possibly emerging as a competitor in the consumer hardware space. The former Apple design chief's influence at OpenAI is expected to extend across the company's ventures, including future versions of ChatGPT, audio features, and other products. The acquisition deal, which also involved OpenAI previously acquiring a 23% stake in io, places Ive at the forefront of a new era of AI-powered devices aimed at moving consumers away from screens. Investors' reactions reflect the potential implications for Apple as it faces a new challenge from a company closely associated with its own AI initiatives. The acquisition underscores the evolving dynamics in the tech industry, where partnerships and competition often intersect, leading to shifts in investor sentiment.

OpenAI recruits iPhone designer Jony Ive to work on AI hardware | BreakingNews.ie

OpenAI has recruited Jony Ive, the designer behind Apple's iPhone, to lead a new hardware project for the artificial intelligence company that makes ChatGPT. OpenAI said it is acquiring io, a product and engineering company co-founded by Mr Ive, in a deal valued at nearly 6.5 billion dollars. OpenAI said its CEO Sam Altman had been "quietly" collaborating since 2023 with Mr Ive and his design firm, LoveFrom. Mr Ive worked at Apple for more than two decades and is known for his work on the iPhone, iMac and iPad designs. Mr Ive was Apple's chief design officer before leaving the company in 2019 to start his own design firm. In a joint letter posted on OpenAI's website on Wednesday, Mr Ive and Mr Altman said it "became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company". That is when Ive co-founded io with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan. OpenAI said Mr Ive will not become an OpenAI employee and his design collective, LoveFrom, will remain independent but "will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io". Both OpenAI and Mr Ive's design firm are based in San Francisco.

OpenAI buys iPhone designer Jony Ive's hardware startup for $6.5 bln

STORY: He's the man who designed the original iPhone and other famous Apple products. Now Jony Ive is set to work for OpenAI. The ChatGPT maker is buying his hardware startup io Products in a deal sources valued at $6.5 billion. Though none of the parties involved would confirm the terms of the agreement. Ive will now become OpenAI's creative head. The company hopes that will let it combine design and technology in the same way that proved so successful for Apple. Boss Sam Altman said OpenAI was thinking about new ways of interacting with AI. Another Ive startup - design firm LoveFrom - has been working with the bot maker for two years on hardware. Altman said he had a prototype of a device that he described as "the coolest piece of technology the world will have ever seen". Though he offered no further details of what it might be. One analyst said OpenAI wanted to own the next big hardware platform so that it doesn't have to sell its products through Apple or Google devices. But attempts to create the next big thing in AI gadgets have run into challenges. Humane AI - set up by former Apple executives - saw its AI Pin flop. The gadget was criticized for high costs, poor battery life and limited functionality. Meanwhile, startup Rabbit has sold some 100,000 of its r1 devices, but it too has been criticized for limited functionality compared to smartphones.

OpenAI buys iPhone designer Ive's hardware startup, names him creative head

(Reuters) -OpenAI is buying Jony Ive's startup io Products in a $6.5 billion deal and will bring the chief designer of early iPhones on board as creative head to develop devices tailored for the generative artificial intelligence era. LoveFrom, the design firm founded by Ive after leaving Apple, has been working with OpenAI for two years on generative AI devices - an area where startups have stumbled due to high computing demands, including flops such as Humane's AI Pin. With Ive leading design, OpenAI aims to pair the technology behind its popular ChatGPT chatbot with the product design expertise that made devices such as the iPhone bestsellers. The companies did not disclose the financial details of the deal for io, which Ive co-founded a year ago. The all-stock deal was valued at $6.5 billion based on OpenAI's $300 billion valuation, according to a source familiar with the matter. OpenAI had previously owned a 23% stake in the company, according to the source who requested anonymity to discuss private matters. "The products that we're using to deliver and connect us to unimaginable technology. They're decades old, yeah, and so it's just common sense to at least think surely there's something beyond these legacy products we have," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Ive said in a video posted on OpenAI's blog. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The news weighed on Apple's shares, which were down 2%. A few companies such as Humane AI and Rabbit have tried to build bespoke devices for the AI era. However, Humane AI, founded by a former Apple executives, struggled with its AI Pin device, which faced criticism for battery life, heat issues, limited functionality and high costs. HP acquired Humane AI's assets, including its AI platform Cosmos, intellectual property and technical talent for $116 million, effectively discontinuing the AI Pin product. Rabbit, on the other hand, has sold more than 100,000 of r1 devices, but reviewers have said functionality remains limited when compared with smartphones. (Reporting by Akash Sriram and Aditya Soni in Bengaluru and Krystal Hu in New York; Editing by Arun Koyyur)

OpenAI to acquire iPhone designer Jony Ive's startup to make next gen AI device

Io brings with it a team of around 55 experts -- including former Apple designers like Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan. OpenAI is making a major move by acquiring io, a startup founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive. This all-equity deal values the startup at $6.5 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. Ive and his design firm began collaborating with OpenAI and Sam Altman two years ago, the AI giant revealed. Altman shared his excitement on X, saying, "thrilled to be partnering with jony, imo the greatest designer in the world. excited to try to create a new generation of AI-powered computers." The deal is a major step for OpenAI, which has been expanding its consumer products since ChatGPT's launch in 2022. Earlier this month, it appointed former Meta and Instacart executive Fidji Simo to lead its consumer applications. Also read: Elon Musk calls Bill Gates a liar, says won't trust him to babysit my kids Io brings with it a team of around 55 experts -- including former Apple designers like Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan, according to the report. Ive and his design firm LoveFrom will lead creative and design work at OpenAI but will continue to operate independently. Altman and Ive have reportedly been building a device that moves consumers beyond screens. Bloomberg reports that the first device could arrive in 2026. OpenAI already reportedly owned a 23 percent stake in io from a previous deal, meaning it will now pay about $5 billion to acquire the rest. Also read: iPhone 16 Plus available with Rs 11,600 discount: How to avail this offer In a video posted by OpenAI, Altman explained the goal is to create a family of AI devices that help people use AI to create "all sorts of wonderful things." Ive shared that everything he has learned "over the last 30 years has led me to this place and this moment." He said the first product they're working on has "completely captured" his imagination.

Sam Altman and Jony Ive are cooking the future of AI gadgets: What does this mean?

From the beige boxes of the late '90s to the scintillating aluminium and glass of today, I've seen our devices evolve from mere tools to extensions of ourselves. We've gone from lugging around chunky desktop towers to slipping elegant slabs of silicon into our back pockets. Yet, for all that progress, the fundamental shape of personal computing has remained all too familiar - with screens, keyboards, touch surfaces, and cameras. Now, in a move that feels both audacious and inevitable, OpenAI has announced it will acquire Jony Ive's AI device startup, io, in a $6.5 billion all-equity transaction - ushering in what Sam Altman calls "the coolest piece of technology the world will have ever seen," and what Ive describes in equal measure as "an extraordinary moment" in computing. When the poster boy of GenAI meets the most iconic industrial designer of the digital age, it's difficult to not get excited. So what are these two people cooking? Whether it was my very first clunky Pentium II PC in 1998, Apple's brushed-metal MacBooks of the mid-2000s, or everything that followed since Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, the device that "redefined what a phone could be." All of these hardware revolutions followed familiar paradigms of screens of glass with clickable mechanisms and a contin­ued reliance on graphical user interfaces. Also read: OpenAI to acquire iPhone designer Jony Ive's startup to make next gen AI device But over the last two years, Generative AI - ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Midjourney, etc - has rewritten the script of software. Where software capabilities have exploded manifold in the last 2-3 years, hardware has languished poorly behind, unable to catch up and bound to interfaces designed long before neural networks could paint like Picasso or draft legal contracts in seconds. This is precisely the point that Sam Altman made while unveiling OpenAI's io acquisition. "The products that we're using to deliver and connect us to unimaginable technology... are decades old," he observed, suggesting that it's "common sense to... think surely there's something beyond these legacy products we have." By joining forces with Jony Ive, OpenAI isn't merely chasing fleeting gadget trends. It wants to stake a claim on the physical manifestation of AI in our lives going forward - the evolution from a cursor on a screen to devices that see, hear, interpret, and anticipate our intentions. And what can one say about Jony Ive? The man who needs no introduction, at least to a gadgetophile. As the architect of devices that have become cultural relics in their own right - the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone - his touch defines modern gadgetry. Yet Ive himself has been searching for the next frontier, since leaving Apple in 2019 (and ceasing to have any influence over Apple product designs since 2022). Also read: Which ChatGPT model to use when: Simple explainer on GPT-4o, GPT-o3 and GPT-4.5 "This is an extraordinary moment," Ive says, "Computers are now seeing, thinking, and understanding. Despite this unprecedented capability, our experience remains shaped by traditional products and interfaces." io was Ive's answer to solve this conundrum, a brand dedicated to "physical AI embodiments," devices that would bridge the disembodied power of large language models with the immediacy of hands-on hardware. LoveFrom, Ive's design collective, will remain independent in the deal, yet deeply intertwined with OpenAI, taking a stake in the company and leading the design vision of future AI hardware. It's a partnership that makes sense: OpenAI's software acumen fused with Ive's laser-focused design ethos. As Altman enthused, "Jony called one day and said this is the best work our team has ever done. I mean, Jony did the iPhone... It's hard to beat those things." The io acquisition hints at devices that might blur the boundary between software and hardware, perhaps through voice, gesture, or even neural interfaces. Imagine a pair of ear-worn assistants that overlay AI whispers on the world around you, or a bedside orb that dims the lights and reads you a bedtime story in your own voice. Altman and Ive have already teased prototypes, though details remain under wraps. "Jony recently gave me one of the prototypes... I've been able to live with it, and I think it is the coolest piece of technology the world will have ever seen," Altman gushed. That's high praise indeed, especially from someone who's built ChatGPT into a household name. But as with every major shift - think the move from command-line interfaces to GUIs, or from desktops to smartphones - the proof will be in everyday use. It's also worth remembering that such lofty ambitions can easily be tripped up. Take, for instance, the Humane AI Pin. Unveiled in 2018 as a wearable, voice-activated AI assistant meant to supplant smartphones, it promised to be our pocket philosopher and digital concierge. Yet when it finally shipped in 2024, it stumbled with negative reviews complaining of clunky hardware, underwhelming battery life, limited AI capabilities, and a price tag that outstripped its value. Critics panned it, and it became a cautionary tale of half-baked innovation detached from genuine user needs. Also read: Elon Musk vs Sam Altman: AI breakup that refuses to end OpenAI and LoveFrom will need to heed that lesson. It's not enough to graft a powerful AI chip onto a novel form factor, the device must feel as natural as flipping open a book or tying your shoelaces. It must solve real problems, anticipate real moments of friction, and vanish into the background when its work is done. Altman's confidence - "I am absolutely certain that we are literally on the brink of a new generation of technology that can make us our better selves" - is infectious. But we've seen that the path from prototype to pocket is fraught with obstructions: battery constraints, thermal limits, supply chains, and the simple fact that humans can be fickle about new form factors. What resonates in this announcement is not just the size of the deal - $6.5 billion all in stock - but the long-term vision behind it. OpenAI isn't pursuing a quick hardware pivot, but this is a decade-long play to reimagine how we interact with the world's fastest-growing class of software. Ive, who says "I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this moment," brings an almost philosophical commitment to experience design. LoveFrom's independence ensures that the creative process won't be shackled by quarter-to-quarter metrics. Today, we're drowning in notifications, trapped in screens, and conditioned to tap, scroll, and swipe. The promise of "physical AI embodiments" is to liberate us from that treadmill - letting technology recede into the background so we can engage more fully with our surroundings. But for that promise to be realized, hardware must feel intuitive, natural, and even delightful. It has to surprise us in small, meaningful ways. Like a gentle vibration to signal an emotion, a light pattern that soothes rather than distracts, a form factor that invites touch instead of demanding it. Also read: ChatGPT 4o's personality crisis: Sam Altman on when AI tries to please In my years of covering tech, if I've learned something it's this: It's not just enough for great software alone to drive hardware adoption, but great design is the true glue that binds utility of software and services with the delight of its overall usefulness. The OpenAI-io deal and Sam Altman-Jony Ive partnership stakes a bet on that alchemy, uniting software's boundless creativity with design's human-centric rigour. Will it be the flash in the pan of the Humane AI Pin, or the enduring revolution of the iPhone? Time will tell. But one thing feels abundantly clear already. If there's any partnership that can deliver on the promise of hardware that truly extends AI into our daily lives - without the guileless hype, without the gimmicks - it's this one. For the first time in years, I'm genuinely excited to see what emerges from the lab bench into our hands. Because at the end of the day, the devices that matter most aren't the ones with the flashiest specs but the ones that become part of our habits, habits that shape our days and, ultimately, our lives. Here's hoping Altman and Ive have not just designed technology - but have reimagined what it means to use it.

Jony Ive joins hands with OpenAI: A look at every iconic device he made for Apple

After much speculation about OpenAI's potential entry into the hardware segment, the ChatGPT maker has officially confirmed the move. The AI giant has officially announced the acquisition of io, a spinout startup from LoveFrom, founded by the legendary Apple designer Sir Jony Ive. The all-equity deal, reportedly valued at $6.5 billion, shows OpenAI's clear intentions to move to the consumer hardware segment. And the move itself makes the plan evident as they have chosen Apple's iconic design veteran Jony Ive and his core team, including former Apple notables Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tang Tan, the minds behind many of Apple's most successful products. As part of the agreement, Ive and his 55-member team will oversee OpenAI's creative and design efforts while continuing to operate independently. While the exact nature of OpenAI's AI-powered consumer devices remains uncertain, reports suggest the first product may launch by 2026. Taking to social media, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said the goal is to help people use AI to create all sorts of things. But before OpenAI introduces the first AI-powered hardware, here is a look at the iconic designs Jony Ive created for Apple, which helped the iPhone maker expand its presence globally. It was Jony Ive's design when Apple brought the translucent, colorful shell, ditching the beige boxes, enhancing the computer aesthetics. With this, the company, for the first time, adopted the USB and ditched the floppy drive. The iBook G3's clamshell design was inspired by the iMac to go. It offered colorful, translucent shells in Blueberry, Tangerine, Indigo, Graphite, and a Key Lime variant. It did not feature pinstripes and is known for its durability. It was the first mainstream laptop with built-in Wi-Fi, aimed at students and creatives. Among the most transformative devices in the early 2000s, the iPod changed the way people listened to music. It had a sleek, minimalist aesthetic and an intuitive click-wheel interface. The iPod featured clean lines, a compact form factor, and a user-centric interface that set new standards in consumer tech. If reports are true, Ive took inspiration from classic industrial design, including the Braun T3 radio. The iMac G4's was a bit different from the conventional desktop of its time. It offered sunflower-inspired shape and combined a 10.6-inch hemispherical base housing all the internal components and a flat-screen LCD mounted on a sleek stainless steel adjustable arm. It allowed the display to be tilted, adjusted without requiring much effort. The first-ever iPhone, also called the most disruptive product of the 21st century, also came from Ive's list of ideas. It brought together the music, internet, and a phone in a sleek form factor, and touchscreen, attracting millions of users worldwide. The MacBook Air came out as an ultra-portable laptop when it debuted in 2008. It was crafted from a single block of machined aluminum, offering an exceptionally thin and lightweight profile, tapering from the back to the front in a wedge shape. The first-generation iPad was the company's first tablet computer, marking the beginning of a new era. The device featured a 9.7-inch touchscreen, Apple A4 chip, and was available in Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G variants. It ran on iOS and supported web browsing, email, multimedia, and apps via the App Store. It did not have the cameras. Jony Ive took charge of software design and introduced a massive overhaul in the operating system, iOS 7. It was a flat, minimal and a colourful redesign which has set the tone for modern mobile interfaces. Apple's first ever wearable, which aimed to bring together health, fashion, and tech, was introduced in 2014. It had a square face, modular bands, and made it unique thanks to the integration with the iPhone. Apple's headquarters also have Ive's design touch. With Foster + Partners, he shaped the massive circular campus in Cupertino like one of his precision-designed products.