OpenAi will buy the co-founde devices startup by former Apple Jony Ive, in an agreement almost totally in stocks of $ 6.5 billion, joining forces with the legendary designer to advance the hardware.
The purchase – the largest in OpenAi’s history – will provide the company a unit dedicated to the development of AI -powered devices. The acquisition of the secret startup, called IO, will also guarantee Ive and other Apple’s ex-designers services behind iconic products such as iPhone.
“I have a growing feeling that everything I’ve learned in the last 30 years has led me to this place and this moment,” Ive said in a joint interview with OpenAi CEO Sam Altman. “It’s a relationship and a way to work together that I think it will result in products and products and products.”
For the British designer, the change marks the return to the consumer technology industry in which he was one of the pioneers. Working for years alongside Steve Jobs, he shaped the appearance and sensation of the modern smartphone, as well as the iPod, iPad and Apple Watch. He left Apple in 2019.
When Ive left Apple, CEO Tim Cook suggested that both parties would continue to collaborate. But they never launched a product together after Ive’s departure. And now the designer is boarding a new collaboration with Altman, whom he called “rare visionary.”
Ive was once described by Jobs as his “spiritual partner”, and his new phase projecting rival technology products can be seen as a bad omen for Apple – a company that is already struggling to compete in AI. In the interview, Altman said Jobs would be “very proud” of Ive’s last movement.
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OpenAi will create a product with a quality level that “never happened before in consumer hardware,” said Altman. “AI is a big leap ahead in terms of what people can do, and this needs a new type of factor in a computational way to extract as much potential from it,” he added.
As part of the agreement, OpenAi is paying $ 5 billion in stocks by IO. The rest of the nearly $ 6.5 billion results 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 the time. Philanthropic billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs is also a supporter of IO, through her company, Emerson Collective. Other investors include Sutter Hill Ventures, Thrive Capital, Maverick Capital and SV Angel. OpenAi stated that Altman has no actions in IO.
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The agreement is expected to be completed this summer, depending on regulatory approvals. The acquisition of IO will provide OpenAI about 55 hardware engineers, software developers, and manufacturing experts – a team that will build what Ive and Altman expect it to be a family of devices. The two executives were already exploring some initial ideas for about two years, they said.
The pair expects their first device to be a truly new type of product. “People have an appetite for something new, which reflects a kind of discomfort to where we are today,” Ive said, referring to the products available today. The first Ive and Altman devices are scheduled to be released in 2026.
When he left Apple six years ago, Ive founded Lovefrom, a collective of designers and engineers. The team includes veterans from Apple’s hardware and software departments, as well as Ive friends and other collaborators.
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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 the iPhone and Apple Watch product design by 2024. Cannon worked at Apple before co-creating the Mailbox popular email app, which was purchased by Dropbox.
In IO, the group set out to develop, engineer and manufacture a collection of products for an artificial general intelligence era – the point where technology reaches human cognitive skills. The team will now continue this mission at OpenAi, becoming a threat to the devices themselves that designers have helped create.
This increases Apple’s challenges, which is left behind in its pairs of Silicon Valley in Artificial Intelligence. The company’s AI platform, launched last year, lacks rival systems capabilities and depends in part of OpenAi’s chatbot chatgpt to fill the gaps.
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Still, Ive and Altman don’t see the iPhone disappearing anytime soon. “Just as the smartphone didn’t make the laptop disappear, I don’t think our first thing will make the smartphone disappear,” said Altman. “It’s a totally new type of thing.”
“The phone, as it is today, is a remarkable general device,” Ive said, adding that people will connect with “very new ways.”
OpenAi, founded a decade ago as a research organization, became a driving force on IA with the launch of ChatgPT in 2022. Company’s evaluation increased to $ 300 billion, and it seeks to expand its reach through acquisitions. OpenAi is working on other transactions, such as a $ 3 billion agreement for the Windsurf AI Coding Software company.
OpenAi also reformulated its management this month, with the company based on San Francisco naming Instacart head, Fidji Simo, as 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 Chatgpt’s debut led to a perception that hardware technology would need to change. “A number of us looked at each other and said, ‘This is probably the most amazing technology of our career,” she said in an interview.
Although Ive and Lovefrom remain independent, they will take over the design of the entire OpenAI, including their software. Altman said his first conversations with Ive was not about hardware, but about how to improve the chatgpt interface.
“We are obviously still in the terminal phase of AI interactions,” said Altman, 40. “We have not yet found what will be the equivalent of the user’s graphical interface, but we will.”
Lovefrom has several former Apple designers who helped create the appearance of MAC and iPhone operating systems, including Bas Ording, Mike Matas and Chris Wilson, Ive said. They could help redesign the OpenAI app for a new generation of consumers.
Lovefrom will continue its existing customer relationships such as Ferrari and Airbnb, but will not assume new customers. The new hardware team within OpenAi will be supervised by Peter Welinder, who will report Altman as vice president of product.
Ive said ChatgPT was initially placed on his radar by one of his twin sons, Charlie, and he immediately knew that he needed to meet Altman after using it. The new OpenAi team will work in the existing IO working space in Jackson Square, a San Francisco neighborhood, and in current OpenAi offices.
“I feel my most important and useful work is ahead,” Ive said, adding that she has “trained” for this moment. He compares the experience to Apple in the late 1990s and early 2000s, before the iPod and iPhone. “I’m really, really grateful for all of us to have found us.”
Ive and Altman have not prepared which hardware products they are developing, but they will enter a market in their childhood. Meta Platforms Inc., owner of Facebook and Instagram, is perhaps the most remarkable AI device manufacturer. It sells popular Ray-Ban smart glasses that wear cameras and microphones to provide context about the surrounding environment.
There were also public failures, such as Humane Ai Pin and personal assistant device Rabbit R1. “These were very bad products,” said Ive, 58. “There was an absence of new ways of thinking expressed in products.”
Tan, who was central to the development of all iPhone versions within Apple’s hardware engineering department, said the new team is not linked to a “legacy” and will have the opportunity to “rethink this space.” Still, delivering a product will take some time.
“It’s worth waiting,” said Altman. “It’s a crazy and ambitious thing to do.”
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