OpenAI said it is acquiring legendary iPhone designer Jony Ive’s secretive artificial intelligence (AI) hardware startup io for about $6.5 billion to develop a “family of AI products.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a video that a prototype Ive shared with him “is the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen.”
The all-equity deal, which includes OpenAI’s current stake in the year-old company, was announced Wednesday by Ive and Altman in a post. The first devices, which reportedly could include smart home gadgets, are set to launch in 2026. [OpenAI previously held a 23% stake in io, according to The New York Times.]
“We gathered together the best hardware and software engineers, the best technologists, physicists, scientists, researchers and experts in product development and manufacturing,” Ive and Altman wrote. “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.”
According to the post, Ive and his creative collective LoveFrom quietly began collaborating with Altman and OpenAI two years ago. 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 LoveFrom will stay independent.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Ive — who left Apple Inc. in 2019 after nearly 30 years — dismissed previous AI hardware misfires such as Humane AI Pin and rabbit r1 as “very poor products.” He added, “There has been an absence of new ways of thinking expressed in products.”
The collaboration comes as companies like Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. race to incorporate AI into their software and build new products powered by the technology, from smart glasses to new types of handheld devices. On Tuesday, Google announced plans for AI-fueled smart glasses. Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses have already sold at least 2 million pairs.
“I think we have the opportunity here to kind of completely reimagine what it means to use a computer,” Altman said in the video.
A deal has been rumored, and percolating, for weeks, according to various reports. The Information reported OpenAI interest in buying or partnering with io, whose small team includes former Apple designers Scott Cannon, Tang Tan and Evans Hankey. io Products has reportedly been working on different concepts of AI-enabled devices.
Last year, Ive confirmed in a New York Times profile that he was working with Altman on an AI hardware project.
“This acquisition reflects a growing understanding that AI must meet users where they are — not just through APIs, but through well-designed, intuitive interfaces,” Saurabh Giri, chief product and technology officer at Voltage Park, said in an email. “At [former employer] Amazon, we focused on making AI scalable and reliable. At Voltage Park, we’re building next-gen infrastructure to power AI factories. OpenAI’s move shows that performance is only half the equation — experience is the other.”
Apple, which has struggled with its own AI initiatives, is expected to offer more details of its Apple Intelligence push at its worldwide developers conference next month.
Indeed, when Ive left Apple in 2019, it came after years of frustration from numerous structural and cultural changes at the company, according to a New York Times article based on Tripp Mickle’s book, “After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul.” Ive chafed as Apple drifted from a design-heavy company to one that was more utilitarian, the book said. Ive’s last major project with Apple was a big one: He helped design the $5 billion, spaceship-shaped Apple Park campus in Cupertino, Calif.
The acquisition of io is likely to further burnish OpenAI as the de facto front-runner in the consumer AI space. Its popular ChatGPT chatbot thrust AI into the spotlight in late 2022.
“This isn’t just about building a smart device, it’s about redefining our interface with intelligence itself,” Jack Myers, author of “The Tao of Leadership,” said in an email. “Just as the iPhone reshaped human behavior through intuitive design, this collaboration has the potential to do the same for AI, making it not just accessible, but emotionally integrated into our lives.”
