Sam AltmanCEO of OpenAi, and Jony IveFounder of the firm Lovefrom and former Design Chief in Apple until 2019, held conversations in 2023 about the creation of a hardware device of artificial intelligence. This dialogue is now materialized in the acquisition of Io, The START.UP of IVE devices, by OpenAI worth 6,500 million dollars, an operation that involves the company’s foray into the field of physical products.
Openai itself has announced it in a statement and a video starring the two entrepreneurs and in which they express the way in which their visions about technology can be combined. They assure that it is a collaboration “based on friendship, curiosity and shared values” that “quickly became ambition”
As explained from Openai, Jony founded IO with the engineers Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang so – all of them worked in Apple – a year ago with the intention of Develop, design and manufacture a new family of products for the new era of artificial intelligence. Now the team will be integrated into OpenAI to collaborate more closely with the research, engineering and product teams of the company in San Francisco.
As part of the operation, Jony and Lovefrom will assume design and creativity responsibilities in Openai and IO.
“AI is an incredible technology, but excellent tools require work that combines technology, design and understanding of people and the world. No one can achieve this as Jony and his team; The care they put in every aspect of the process is extraordinary”, Said Sam Altman, who hopes to recover the creative spirit of Apple 30 years ago.
For his part, Jony Ive, he pointed out feeling excited, but also having responsibility for work. “I have the growing feeling that everything I have learned in the last 30 years has taken me to this moment ”he has expressed in Openai’s statement. “As a designer, I was attracted to the stimulating and innocent optimism of Silicon Valley, the possibility of collaborating with people motivated to create incredible products that raise humanity.“
As they comment in the shared video, the company is already working on the New devices design and production. About the first, Altman comments that it is “of the most cool piece of technology that the world has ever seen”Both consider that the power of artificial intelligence requires new products to the current ones, which have more than a decade of experience. They refer to mobile phones and computers.
It should be remembered that Jony Ive was in charge of designing, together with Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, devices that have transformed the hardware category, such as iPhone, iPod, iPad or Apple Watch, inter alia. His vision has shaped, not only to the company’s products, but those of the smartphones and tablets industry.
Jony Ive left Apple in 2019 and created the firm Lovefrom. In 2024 he founded IO, the year in which Altman acquired a 23%participation, according to the country,
Entrepreneurs have shared few details about what type of products will launch to the market, but both Altman and Ive Look Beyond screens and smartphones. In this sense, it would be expected that their joint work will focus devices without screen, wearable with AI or chamber assistants.
The first products are expected to be launched in 2026.
The acquisition, the largest made by OpenAI so far, marks the future of the company. Would be building your business, covering almost all The artificial intelligence chain: from the manufacture of the software, with products such as chatgpt or sora; going through the services, with API; until the manufacture of hardware devices.
