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."I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this place, and to this moment," said Ive.
According to Altman, OpenAI and io will develop a product that "never happened before in consumer hardware," and Ive said his relationship with OpenAI is going to "yield products and products and products." Altman said that AI's technological leap requires "a new kind of computing form factor to get the maximum potential out of it." 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 .
