Former Apple design chief Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted a video and assertion Wednesday teasing a mysterious AI {hardware} prototype that may apparently come inside a yr as OpenAI buys io, Ivy’s fledgling machine firm, for practically $6.5 billion in an all-stock deal.
“Jony lately gave me one of many prototypes of the machine for the primary time to take house, and I’ve been in a position to dwell with it,” Altman says within the video. “And I believe it’s the coolest piece of know-how that the world could have ever seen.”
Bother is, their video and assertion are extra like love-fests to one another and the San Francisco Bay Space than they’re sources of details about what to anticipate from precise merchandise — as in what earlier stories known as “the iPhone of synthetic intelligence.”
Jony Ive, Sam Altman tease mysterious prototype as OpenAI buys io
The video included under makes temporary and obscure reference to a prototype at in regards to the 3:20 mark, the place Altman feedback on the prototype, however many of the dialogue there and on the OpenAI webpage assertion — which seems to be extra like a marriage invitation than a enterprise deal announcement — is extra about context than something substantial.
However the concept that one thing new is coming rings fairly clear.
“The merchandise that we’re utilizing to ship and join us to unimaginable know-how, they’re many years outdated,” Ive says within the video. “Yeah, and so it’s simply widespread sense to not less than suppose certainly there’s one thing past these legacy merchandise.” However the pair isn’t revealing a lot of something but.
Nevertheless, OpenAI’s acquisition of io brings roughly 55 engineers to OpenAI, together with a number of key former Apple executives who labored alongside Ive on iconic merchandise just like the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, in response to Bloomberg.
The io workforce is led by three Apple alumni: Evans Hankey, Tang Tan and Scott Cannon.
- Hankey is a veteran industrial designer, and one in all Ive’s longest-serving lieutenants. She labored with Ive for greater than a decade in Apple’s storied Industrial Design workforce, and succeeded him as the pinnacle of the unit when Ive left Apple in 2019. She left Apple herself in 2023, becoming a member of Ive at LoveForm,.
- Tan is a mechanical engineer and was Apple’s Vice President of Product Design, accountable for the {hardware} design of the iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods. Tan oversaw the design and manufacture of key parts like biometric shows and well being sensors. He’s named in a whole lot of patents filed whereas working at Apple. He left the corporate in 2004.
- Cannon labored at Apple serving to to steer Mac and iPad improvement. After leaving Apple, in 2013 he co-founded Mailbox, a cellular e-mail app that briefly loved explosive development earlier than being purchased by Dropbox.
New {hardware} deliberate for 2026
Sam & Jony introduce io pic.twitter.com/ej5K59kJq3
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) Might 21, 2025
The workforce will proceed working from io’s San Francisco places of work, creating what they describe as fully new sorts of AI-powered units scheduled to debut in 2026, Bloomberg‘s report mentioned.
“AI is such an enormous leap ahead when it comes to what individuals can do this it wants a brand new type of computing kind issue to get the utmost potential out of it,” Altman defined. Each executives emphasised these merchandise gained’t essentially exchange smartphones, however will introduce fully new methods to work together with AI.
Ive’s design agency LoveFrom will stay impartial however will take over design tasks for all OpenAI merchandise, together with software program interfaces. A number of former Apple UI designers from LoveFrom — together with Bas Ording, Mike Matas and Chris Wilson — might assist reshape ChatGPT’s person expertise.
Potential implications for Apple
The deal represents a major aggressive problem for Apple, which has struggled to determine management in AI. Whereas Apple built-in some ChatGPT performance into iOS 18, the corporate has confronted criticism for falling behind rivals in synthetic intelligence capabilities.
Ive’s departure from Apple in 2019 initially got here with guarantees of continued collaboration with CEO Tim Cook dinner, however no merchandise resulted from that association. Now, the designer who Steve Jobs as soon as known as his “non secular associate” shall be creating competing units at OpenAI.
The transaction is predicted to shut this summer time, pending regulatory approval.
Leander Kahney contributed to this report.
