Openai has acquired the AI Hardware Startup IO of former Apple design chief Jony Ive as a blockbuster.
Key Points
Openai has acquired Jony Ive’s hardware company IO for $6.5 billion in stock, and his LoveFrom team will take over design responsibility across Openaifirst products from a collaboration scheduled for release in 2026
Two years ago, a quiet collaboration began between Openai CEO Sam Altman and legendary Apple designer Jony Ive. That partnership has now evolved into Openai’s biggest acquisition to date. This is a complete absorption of IO, a hardware startup founded with former Apple executives Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan a year ago.
“It has a growing sense that everything I’ve learned over the last 30 years has guided me to this moment,” Ive said in today’s announcement. This is an important statement from designers who have shaped 20 years of iconic Apple products, including the iPhone, iPod, and MacBook Pro.
The deal positions the collective love of Ive and his designs to take on “deep design and creative responsibility” in both Openai and IO, effectively making him the main creative voice of the AI company’s future products. Although technically he will not be an Openai employee, Ive’s impact extends to the entire organization’s design approach.
In the case of OpenAI, this acquisition represents a major strategic push to hardware. The company previously owned a 23% stake in IO, but the full acquisition demonstrates the belief that AI’s future exceeds its current devices and interfaces.
“I think there’s an opportunity here to completely rethink what it means to use a computer,” Altman said in the video of the announcement. “We have magical intelligence in the cloud. If you want to ask Chat Gpt something about something we’ve talked about before, think about what will happen. Reach out for your laptop, open it, launch a web browser, start typing…and the limits of what the laptop’s current tools can do.
While certain products maintain wraps, both Altman and Ive suggest devices that fundamentally change the way people interact with AI. Altman explains the prototype that Ive recently gave him as “the coolest technology the world has ever seen.”
Described as a collection of hardware and software engineers, physicists, researchers and manufacturing experts, the 55-person IO team will work more directly with the Openai research and engineering team in San Francisco. The first product of this collaboration is expected to debut in 2026.
The deal represents a major change in competition in the tech industry. Apple’s stock fell 1.8% in the news, reflecting investors’ concerns that Ive’s creative talent is currently being directed towards potential competitors. With the acquisition, Openai positions Openai against other major tech companies pursuing an AI hardware strategy, including Meta, who hired former Openai Robotics lead Caitlin Kalinowski, who invested in robotic startup physical intelligence with Openai last year.
For the generation raised on traditional computers and smartphones, the promise of a fundamentally new computing paradigm built around AI capabilities is exciting and disruptive. As Ive announced, “It reminds me of my time in America 30 years ago. As a designer, I work with people who were drawn to the exhilarating and innocent optimism of Silicon Valley and were driven to create amazing products that enhance humanity.
It has not yet been seen whether IO’s mystical first product will lead to these lofty aspirations. However, with Ive’s design pedigree and Openai’s technical capabilities now perfectly aligned, the partnership could create a transformative technology that only appears once every decade.
