OpenAI’s $6.5 billion acquisition of Jony Ive’s AI startup io Products has been finalized, the company said today in a letter from CEO Sam Altman and Ive.
While the merger is official, Jony Ive and his LoveFrom design firm will remain independent. Ive and LoveFrom have taken over “deep design and creative responsibilities” at OpenAI.
OpenAI in May announced that it was acquiring io, the hardware-based AI startup co-founded by Former Apple executive Jony Ive. Ive had been working with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on io for two years, and the duo is planning to develop a family of AI devices.
When the acquisition was announced, a video was posted where Altman and Ive outlined their partnership and what they expected to create as a result of the merger. “I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this place, and to this moment,” said Ive. “What we’ve been working on, I think, has completely captured our imagination.”
Altman said Ive gave him a prototype of the first device to allow him to test it. “I’ve been able to live with it, and I think it is the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen,” he said.
Ive has been and will be involved in the design and development of the device, alongside several former Apple design employees who left Apple to co-found io, including Tang Tan, Scott Cannon, and Evans Hankey. They are joined by designer Mark Newson, who Ive has worked with on previous projects. Hankey, Tan, and Cannon will join OpenAI.
So far, specifics of the first io device are unavailable, other than that it won’t be an in-ear device or wearable, and will instead sit in a pocket or on a desk alongside a Mac and an iPhone.
However, there have been reports of Ive working on a device described as a screenless smartphone. While there have been similar screen-free voice-based AI devices released over the last few years (the Rabbit R1 comes to mind), they have not had much success with users. However, a partnership between Ive and OpenAI could be the dynamic duo that could pull off such a feat. More information about the device in question is set to come in 2026.
