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OpenAI Has Discussed Buying Jony Ive and Sam Altman’s AI Device Startup

OpenAI in recent weeks discussed acquiring a startup its CEO Sam Altman has been working on with ex-Apple designer Jony Ive’s studio to develop an artificial intelligence-powered personal device, according to two people with direct knowledge of the deal talks.

They are also discussing partnership options beyond a full acquisition, one of the people said.

Ive and Altman began discussions more than a year ago on a device that could bring to life Altman’s dreams of creating voice-enabled AI assistants reminiscent of those in sci-fi films such as “Her.”

OpenAI executives at one point considered an acquisition price of at least $500 million, one of the people said. An acquisition would include a team of engineers that have worked on the device, one of these people said.

Designs for the AI device are still early and haven’t been finalized, the people said. Potential designs include a “phone” without a screen and AI-enabled household devices, they said. Others close to the project are adamant that it is “not a phone.”

The AI hardware venture—known as io Products—has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Laurene Powell Jobs’s Emerson Collective and other firms. Altman has been working closely on the product, but is not a co-founder, one of the people close to the talks said. Whether he has an economic stake in the hardware project is unclear.

The device project would add to OpenAI’s fast-growing portfolio of products in development as it tries to get its AI into the hands of millions of consumers. Those products include AI that uses web browsers, and teams designing AI server chips and humanoid robots. OpenAI explored numerous options for the server chips, which aim to reduce its reliance on Nvidia, but eventually decided to pursue the effort in-house.

Io Products employed engineers to build the device while OpenAI provided it with AI and Ive’s studio LoveFrom provided design help, the person said.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Tang Tan and Evans Hankey, who previously worked with Ive on the iPhone and recently worked on the AI device startup, would join OpenAI as part of the deal.

Spokespeople for OpenAI and Ive declined to comment.

Building a personalized AI device could put OpenAI in more direct competition with Apple, with which it has an existing partnership. Last June, OpenAI and Apple said the iPhone maker’s Siri assistant would tap ChatGPT to handle some queries and use OpenAI’s models to help customers with writing and image generation tasks.

Though the partnership generated splashy headlines, it’s not clear if the deal has helped it acquire new ChatGPT customers, and Apple didn’t pay OpenAI to use its models.

AI voice assistants are becoming a heated battleground. OpenAI as well as rivals Meta Platforms, Google, Anthropic and xAI have released or are developing AI voice capabilities for their text chatbots. Last year, OpenAI launched a voice mode to ChatGPT, allowing customers to speak with the chatbot.

Around the same time, Meta began exploring AI-powered earphones with cameras, which the company hoped could be used to identify objects and translate foreign languages. It’s also working on a voice assistant people can use while wearing Meta’s Rayban smart glasses.

Consultants are helping clients lower the customs value of imports to cut the cost of new levies

Companies are hunting for creative ways to cut the customs value of their imports to the US in an effort to blunt the financial impact of President Donald Trump’s punitive tariffs.

Advisers say there are methods to lower the reported value of imports by a fifth or more in some cases, but they come with risks and could complicate the intricate tax planning strategies that multinational companies have built up over decades.

With Wednesday’s announcement of new tariffs on imports from almost every country and across most product categories, conversations about so-called valuation strategies have taken on new urgency, consultants say.

“Can you lower the base through various customs planning techniques, so a good that is otherwise sourced at $100 and paying a 25 per cent tariff, can you make that good $90 paying a 25 per cent tariff?” said Mark Ludwig, head of national trade advisory services at RSM, the largest US accounting firm outside the Big Four.

“Magnify that across your universe of goods and over time those moves can add up and make you more competitive.”

Two valuation strategies in particular have increased in popularity, consultants said, as Trump has targeted industries that typically had low or no tariffs. The first involves arranging contracts with suppliers so that an importer can legally report an earlier sale price, before mark-ups by intermediaries. The second involves splitting payments to suppliers into two amounts, only one of which would attract duties.

An example could be a spirits importer whose supplier not only sold them the drink, but also provided advertising and promotional help, said Mathew Mermigousis, BDO’s customs practice leader.

“Under customs rules, generally advertising and promotion is not a dutiable cost,” he said. “If you’re able to extract that and create a separate service payment for it, you lower the dutiable value to help mitigate the impact” of tariffs.

In a webinar for clients on Friday, EY pitched a more intricate version that involved splitting out a royalty for using the intellectual property underlying a product. The royalty should “preferably” be paid to a separate company from the product supplier, it advised.

Within multinationals, which move goods around in a network of global subsidiaries, such strategies can run counter to long-standing tax avoidance plans that typically involve paying high prices to foreign subsidiaries. Those payments are often designed to lower the profits made in the US and increase them in foreign jurisdictions where taxes are lower.

“Historically, many companies have done tax planning first and customs and duty planning second, or 100th,” said Kristin Bohl, a customs adviser at PwC.

The two disciplines can be at “loggerheads”, she said, given that lowering tariffs might increase your income tax bill.

“If you pull one lever and trip up another, then you’re no better off than when you started. But the magnitude of the tariff impact has triggered companies to be more thoughtful about balancing between the two.”

Andrew Siciliano, trade and customs practice leader at KPMG, said he expected multinationals to examine the policies underlying their tax strategy — known as transfer pricing arrangements because they govern the prices charged between subsidiaries in different jurisdictions — and could find they have room to lower prices for US subsidiaries following the tariff rises.

But he cautioned that there are risks to valuation strategies, given they may be questioned by customs authorities.

“It’s complex and risky if not done right,” he said.