OpenAI Has Discussed Buying Jony Ive and Sam Altman’s AI Device Startup
The Takeaway
• OpenAI executives at one point discussed an acquisition price north of $500 million
• Potential designs include a “phone” without a screen and AI-enabled household devices
• An acquisition would include a team of engineers working on the device at the 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.