OpenAI teams up with Apple’s Jony Ive to make AI-first devices

On Wednesday, OpenAI announced that it had acquired the startup of iPhone designer Jony Ive, a big win for the company.

Ive’s startup is called io, and the purchase price is nearly $6.5 billion, according to Bloomberg, which would make it OpenAI’s biggest acquisition to date. The official announcement didn’t contain much detail and mostly consisted of Altman and Ive gushing about each other.

“Two years ago, Jony Ive and the creative collective LoveFrom, quietly began collaborating with Sam Altman and the team at OpenAI. A collaboration built upon friendship, curiosity and shared values quickly grew in ambition. Tentative ideas and explorations evolved into tangible designs. The ideas seemed important and useful. They were optimistic and hopeful. They were inspiring. They made everyone smile. They reminded us of a time when we celebrated human achievement, grateful for new tools that helped us learn, explore and create…We gathered together the best hardware and software engineers, the best technologists, physicists, scientists, researchers and experts in product development and manufacturing. Many of us have worked closely for decades. The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco.”

Fortunately, an accompanying video posted on OpenAI’s X page has more concrete information.

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There’s plenty of gushing there too, but the gist is OpenAI is going to make AI-powered devices with Ive and his io team. The initiative is “formed with the mission of figuring out how to make a family of devices that would let people use AI to create all sorts of wonderful things,” said Altman in the video.

Altman also shared that he has a prototype of what Ive and his team have developed, calling it the “coolest piece of technology the world has ever seen.”

As far back as 2023, there were reports of OpenAI teaming up with Ive for some kind of AI-first device. Altman and Ive’s bromance formed over ideas about developing an AI device beyond the current hardware limitations of phones and computers. “The products that we’re using to deliver and connect us to unimaginable technology, they’re decades old,” said Ive in the video, “and so it’s just common sense to at least think surely there’s something beyond these legacy products.”

Ive is famous for his work at Apple, where he led the designs for the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Steve Jobs even described Ive as his “spiritual partner.”

OpenAI’s move into hardware with a legendary designer, no less, shows the company has no signs of slowing down in terms of dreaming up new products. Just yesterday, Google launched a fleet of AI products, including XR hardware, indicating to some that it had caught up with OpenAI. But OpenAI just unlocked another new realm in AI competition. OpenAI says it plans to share its work with io and Ive starting in 2026.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.