OpenAI declared it can put up an astronomical $6.5 billion to merge with Jony Ive and his secretive AI system design firm. Ive, who helped convey us legendary merchandise just like the iMac and iPhone, will lead the makers of ChatGPT not simply in making a greater chatbot however in making a product that “reimagines” a private laptop. Perhaps Ive and Silicon Valley darling OpenAI CEO Sam Altman could lastly assist us escape our display screen dependancy, or it may simply be one other Humane pin.
Altman and Ive got here collectively in a large media blitz to announce their new match made in heaven. Ive’s firm, LoveFrom, alongside different massive names in tech design areas, together with former lead iPhone designer Tang Tan, was already working with Altman on this system. Now, the engagement is official. Ive and fellow Apple vets will now be closely concerned in all facets of OpenAI’s software program and {hardware} improvement. While LoveFrom is partnered with OpenAI on this undertaking as an unbiased firm, these at Ive’s separate firm, “io,” will work hand-in-hand with the makers of ChatGPT to convey forth “a household of merchandise” designed for our present age of AI.
In an announcement video posted to X, Altman stated this merger was “shaped with the mission of determining the right way to create a household of units that will let individuals use AI to create all types of fantastic issues.” For his half, Ive talked about that the world remains to be fixated on a tool whose design hasn’t radically modified for properly over a decade.
Sam & Jony introduce io pic.twitter.com/ej5K59kJq3
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) May 21, 2025
Ive nonetheless hasn’t supplied an iota of what this supposed system seems to be like, what it does, or the way it has, in his phrases, “captured our creativeness.” It does exist, it’s in some way transportable—as Altman stated he has used an early prototype—however it is going to be saved beneath wraps till some unknown date. The Wall Street Journal reported, based mostly on nameless sources, that the makers of the still-unknown system need to “transfer customers past screens.”
OpenAI, beneath the brand new massive tech chimera spearheaded by Ive and Altman, stated this system could not exchange smartphones, at the very least not initially, in keeping with Bloomberg. In the meantime, Ive’s crew will “take over” all different design area at OpenAI, together with progressing improvement on ChatGPT. Perhaps these veteran designers can transfer the chatbot past its present iteration as a dishonest device utilized by college students to maintain themselves from studying.
As for that unknown AI {hardware}, we will’t assist however remind ourselves about final 12 months’s deluge of AI wearables akin to the Humane AI Pin. That system included connectivity to a chatbot that might additionally deal with mild duties like texts or emails on the behalf of customers. The Ai Pin was inundated with issues and offered so poorly that Humane offered itself off to HP for a fraction of its preliminary $850 billion valuation.
In the interview with Bloomberg, Ive stated the Humane Ai Pin and fellow AI-centric doohickey, the Rabbit R1, had been each “very poor merchandise.” He additional added, “there was an absence of recent methods of considering expressed in merchandise.” Without precise product particulars, potential clients will simply must take his phrase for it.
In a current interview with Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, the person who labored alongside Steve Jobs to create the unique iPhone aired his grievances with the screen-obsessed world he helped create. He known as out social media as a societal unwell, and perhaps he can persuade the corporate to quash its reported plans for a Twitter clone.
