Openai purchases IO, a hardware company founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive and several other former engineers, including Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan.
Ive will not join Openai and his design company Lovefrom remains independent, but Bloomberg reports that they will “take over all Openai designs, including software,” and are valued at almost $6.5 billion.
Approximately 55 hardware engineers, software developers and manufacturing experts will join OpenAI as part of the acquisition. Includes cannon, hankey and tan. The first device after the acquisition is scheduled to be released in 2026.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Ive misfired like “very poor products” like humanitarian Pin and Rabbit R1, saying “there is no new way of thinking expressed in the product.”
The first product is not intended to be an iPhone killer. “I don’t think our first thing is to erase a smartphone just like our smartphone didn’t erase a laptop,” Openai CEO Sam Altman told Bloomberg. “That’s completely new.”
The Wall Street Journal reports that Altman and Lovefrom have been working together for two years and are considering options such as headphones and devices with cameras. Some details about the devices Altman and IVE are currently working on are mentioned in an internal Openai call reviewed by the journal.
The first product the team has been working on “just fully captured our imagination,” he said in a video.
“Johnny recently got to bring home one of the prototypes of the device for the first time. I was able to live with it. I think it’s the coolest technology the world has ever seen,” Altman said.
“We are absolutely sure we are literally on the brink of a new generation of technology that can make us better,” Eve said.
“We’ve brought together the best hardware and software engineers, the best engineers, physicists, scientists, researchers, product development and manufacturing experts,” Ive and Altman said in a joint post. “Many of us have worked closely together for decades. The IO team focuses on developing products that inspire, empower and enable them to work more closely with the San Francisco research, engineering and product teams.”
“AI is an incredible technology, but great tools require technology, design, and work to understand people and the world,” Altman said in a statement. “No one can do this like Johnny and his team. The amount of care they put into every aspect of the process is extraordinary.”
“It has a growing sense that everything I’ve learned over the last 30 years has guided me to this moment,” Eve said. “I am concerned and excited about the substantial work responsibilities going forward, but I am very grateful for the opportunity to participate in such an important collaboration. The value and vision of the SAM, Openai and IO teams is an unusual inspiration.”
“A lot of us looked at each other and said, ‘This is probably the most incredible skill of our career,” Hanky said in an interview with Bloomberg.
Updated May 21: Information from the Wall Street Journal has been added.
Updated, May 22: Details of leaked devices have been added to the Wall Street Journal.
