OpenAI is buying io, a hardware company founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive and several other former engineers from his time there, including Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tang Tan.
Ive won’t be joining OpenAI, and his design firm, LoveFrom, will continue to be independent, but they will “take over design for all of OpenAI, including its software,” in a deal valued at nearly $6.5 billion, Bloomberg reports.
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.”
The first product isn’t intended to be an iPhone killer, though: “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 told Bloomberg. “It is a totally new kind of thing.”
The Wall Street Journal reports that Altman and LoveFrom have been working together for two years and have considered options like headphones and devices with cameras.
The first product the team has been working on “has just completely captured our imagination,” Ive said in a video.
“Jony recently 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 will have ever seen,” Altman said.
“I am absolutely certain that we are literally on the brink of a new generation of technology that can make us our better selves,” Ive said.
“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.”
“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.”
“I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this moment,” Ive said. “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.”
“A number of us looked at each other and said, ‘This is probably the most incredible technology of our career,’” Hankey said in an interview with Bloomberg.
Update, May 21st: Added information from The Wall Street Journal.
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