Openaai will acquire the AI ​​device startup that is co-founded by Apple Inc. Veteran Jony IVE in an all-floor deal in the amount of almost $ 6.5 billion and join together with the legendary designer to make a boost in hardware.

The purchase of the largest in the history of Openai will provide the company a special unit for the development of devices with AI-driven devices. The acquisition of the secret startup with the name IO will also secure the services of IVE and other former Apple designers that were behind iconic products such as the iPhone.

“I have a growing feeling that everything I have learned in the past 30 years led me to this place and at that moment,” I said in a joint interview with the Opena Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman. “It is a relationship and a way of working together that, in my opinion, provide products, products and products.”

For the designer born in the UK, the move marks a top -class return to an industry of consumer technology that he has helped Pioneer. He worked next to Steve Jobs for years and created the appearance of the modern smartphone next to the iPod, iPad and Apple Watch. He left Apple in 2019.

When I left Apple, CEO Tim Cook threw the idea that the two parties would remain collaborators. But they never published a product together after IVES output. And now the designer begins a new collaboration with Altman, which he described as a “rare visionary”.

I was once described by Jobs as his “spiritual partner”, and his new residence development of rival technology products could be seen as a bad omen for Apple – a company that was already fighting to take part in the AI. In the interview, Altman said that jobs were “damn proud” on Ives’s youngest step.

Openai will create a product with a quality level that “has never happened in consumer hardware,” said Altman. “Ai is such a big leap forward, what people can do that it needs a new type of computer form factor to make the maximum potential out of the way,” he said.

As part of the deal, Openai pays 5 billion US dollars of equity for IO. The remaining amount of almost 6.5 billion US dollars results from a partnership in the fourth quarter of last year, in which Openaai acquired a share of 23% in IO.

Regardless of this, Openais Startup Fund also invested in the IVE company. The billionaire of the Philanthropin Laurene Powell Jobs is also an IO supporter by her company The Emerson Collective. Other investors are Sutter Hill Ventures, Thrive Capital, Maverick Capital and SV Angel. Altman has no equity in IO, said Openaai.

The deal is expected to be completed this summer until the regulatory permits are viewed. The takeover of IO offers Openai with around 55 hardware engineers, software developers and manufacturing experts – a team that builds up what IVE and Altman expect to be a family of devices. The two managers had examined some early ideas for about two years, they said.

The couple expects their first device to be a really new type of product. “People have an appetite for something new that reflects a kind of discomfort about where we are currently,” said IVE, referring to products that are available today. IVE and Altman’s first devices are to debut in 2026.

When he left Apple six years ago, I started the fixed LOVEFROM, a collective of designers and engineers. The employees include veterans of Apple’s hardware and software departments as well as friends of IVE and other employees.

He was then a co -founder of IO with the Apple Alumni Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tang last year. Hankey was the successor to Apple and stayed in the company until 2023, while Tan Led iPhone and Apple Watch Product Design until 2024. Cannon worked at Apple before creating the once popular e-mail app mailbox with the creation of Dropbox Inc.

At IO, the group set out to develop a collection of products for an era of artificial general intelligence, the point where the technology reaches human cognitive skills. The team will now continue this mission at Openai and become a threat to the devices that the designers have contributed to the creation.

This contributes to the challenges of Apple, who fell into artificial intelligence behind his colleagues in Silicon Valley. The company’s AI platform published last year lacks the skills of competitive systems and partly relies on Openas Chatgpt Chatbot to close the gaps.

Nevertheless, I and Altman do not see that the iPhone will soon disappear. “Just as the smartphone did not make the laptop disappear, I don’t think that our smartphone is the first to disappear,” said Altman. “It’s a completely new kind of things.”

“The phone, as it is currently, is a remarkable all -purpose device,” Ive said, adding that people will contact “very new species”.

Openaai, which was founded as a research organization a decade ago, became a driving force in the AI ​​with the publication of Chatgpt in 2022. The company’s assessment rose to 300 billion US dollars and strives to expand its reach through acquisitions. Openai works on other transactions, such as B. a 3 -billion dollar contract for the AI ​​coding -software company Windsurf.

Openaai also shaked its management ranks this month, and InstaCart Chief Fidji Simo as CEO of applications created in San Francisco. She reports directly to Altman and allows him to concentrate on the wider strategy.

Hankey, who, together with Tan and Cannon, becomes an Openai employee, said that Chatgpt’s debut made a realization that the hardware technology had to change. “Some of us looked at and said:” This is probably the most incredible technology of our career, “she said in an interview.

While IVE and LOVEFROM remain independent, they take over the design for all Openai, including its software. Altman said his first talks with IVE was not about hardware, but about improving the surface of Chatgpt.

“We are obviously still in the terminal phase of AI interactions,” said Altman, 40.

LoveFrom has a number of former Apple designers who have contributed to creating the appearance of the Mac and iPhone operating systems, including BAS Ording, Mike Matas and Chris Wilson, said Ive. You could help to redesign the Openai app for a new generation of consumers.

LOVEFROM will continue its existing relationships with customers such as Ferrari NV and Airbnb Inc., but will not take on new customers. The new hardware team in Openaai is supervised by Peter Welinder, who will report Altman as a product vice President.

I said Chatgpt was first recorded on his radar by one of his twin sons, Charlie, and he knew immediately that he had to make an old man after using. The new OPENAI team will work in the existing work area of ​​IO in Jackson Square, a quarter in San Francisco, and the current Openai offices.

“I have the feeling that my most important and most useful work is ahead of us,” Ive said and added that he “trained” for that moment. He compares the experience in the late 1990s and early 2000s before the iPod and iPhone with Apple. “I am just very, very grateful that we all found each other.”

IVE and Altman would not go into more detail on which hardware products they are working on, but they will enter a market in their infancy. Meta Platforms Inc., the owner of Facebook and Instagram, may be the most remarkable manufacturer of AI devices. It sells popular Ray-Ban smart glasses that use cameras and microphones to create a context over the environment.

There were also public failures such as the human AI PIN and the Personal Assistant device from rabbit R1. “They were very bad products,” said Ive, 58.

Tan, who was of central importance in the development of every version of the iPhone in Apple’s Hardware Engineering Department, said that the new team was not tied to a “legacy” and will have the opportunity to rethink this space. However, the provision of a product takes a while.

“It will be worth waiting,” said Altman. “It is a crazy, ambitious thing to do.”

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Published on May 21, 2025