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.
In a video shared by OpenAI, Altman and Ive outlined their partnership and what they expect to create as a result of the merger. "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. "What we've been working on, I think, has completely captured our imagination."
According to Altman, Ive gave him a prototype of the first device to take home to test. "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," he said.
"The products that we're using to deliver and connect us to unimaginable technology, they're decades old. It's just common sense to at least think surely there's something beyond these legacy products," explained Ive.
Ive will be involved in the design of the device, as will several former Apple design employees who co-founded io with Ive, 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.
"I think we have the opportunity here to kind of completely reimagine what it means to use a computer," Altman said. Past leaks and details about io have described what Ive is working on as a smartphone without a screen, though little is known about it at this time. 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 famous for his design expertise, and OpenAI is an industry leader. The partnership could result in a device that other companies aren't capable of producing.
"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.
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 different, with more information set to come 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 Bloomberg.
