Sam Altman’s OpenAI announced on Wednesday that it is buying a hardware startup called io from Jony Ive, the former Apple exec who led the design of the iPhone and other iconic products. The deal is valued at nearly $6.5 billion, a spokesperson confirmed to BI.
Ive and his design firm, LoveFrom, began working with Altman and OpenAI two years ago before he founded the AI hardware startup one year later with Scott Cannon, Tang Tan, and Evans Hankey. Ive left Apple in 2019 after nearly 30 years at the company.
Now, io will merge with OpenAI to “work more intimately with the research, engineering, and product teams in San Francisco,” according to a press release.
A video of Altman and Ive posted to OpenAI’s social media says the two tech titans are teaming up to create a “family of AI products.”
Sitting in a San Francisco cafe together in the video, Altman says he and Ive started talking two years ago about “what the future of AI and new kinds of computers was going to look like.”
Ive, who was instrumental to the creation of the iMac and iPhone, was formerly Apple’s chief design officer and close collaborator of Steve Jobs, who once called him his “spiritual partner at Apple.”
After stepping away from his full-time work at Apple, Ive launched LoveFrom with fellow designer Marc Newson. The company counted Apple and Airbnb among its early clients. Ive and LoveFrom will continue to work closely with OpenAI, but will remain independent, according to a company spokesperson.
Though Ive was known for his minimalist designs at Apple — think the sleekness of the iPhone — he said recently that he’s now in his “ornament era.” Ive said during a fireside chat earlier this month that his recent design work has been influenced by a wide range of industrial, graphic, and sound designers.
Altman, who cofounded OpenAI in 2015, has played a critical role in shifting OpenAI from a nonprofit research project into a $300 billion AI giant competing with the likes of Apple and Google.
OpenAI’s recent slate of products has focused on AI software, in the form of large language models, reasoning models, image generators, and chatbots.
Altman, however, has previously dabbled in the hardware space.
The OpenAI CEO invested in Humane, a wearable AI pin that was intended to replace smartphones, but ultimately floundered after poor reviews and sold its assets to HP.
Altman’s cryptocurrency project, World, is building a new verification network for humans with melon-sized devices called Orbs, which take pictures of the human iris. World said the orb was designed by Ive’s first hire at Apple, Thomas Meyerhoffer, who worked closely with the design executive on projects including the iMac.
In 2023, Altman, when asked about AI hardware, said he had “no interest in trying to compete with a smartphone.”
“What AI enables is so fundamentally new,” Altman said at the time. “I think it’s well worth the effort of talking and thinking about what we can make now. If the answer turned out to be nothing, I would be a little bit disappointed.”
OpenAI said it planned to share more about what io had been working on next year.
