OpenAI goes all in on hardware, will buy Jony Ive's AI startup

OpenAI is officially getting into the hardware business. 

In a video posted to X on Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and former Apple designer Jony Ive, who worked on flagship products like the iPhone, revealed a partnership to create the next generation of AI-enabled devices. 

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The AI software company announced it is merging with io, an under-the-radar startup focused on AI devices that Ive founded a year ago alongside several partners. In the video, Altman and Ive say they have been “quietly” collaborating for two years. As part of the deal, Ive and those at his design firm, LoveFrom, will remain independent but will take on creative roles at OpenAI.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET’s parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.

“The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower, and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering, and product teams in San Francisco,” OpenAI wrote in an accompanying blog post about the merger. The post did not offer many more details. 

Notably, the announcement comes as Google’s annual developer conference, named I/O, is still underway. 

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“I want this to be democratized, I want everyone to have it,” Altman says in the video, referring to the hardware OpenAI aims to build under the new partnership. Earlier this month, OpenAI moved to become a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), announcing the shift with similar language about making AI accessible to as many people as possible and focused on social betterment goals. Historically, technology of that caliber takes a while to become truly accessible and intuitive for large groups of people to use, and current AI devices like the iPhone 16 require specific, expensive hardware to run. 

Emphasizing how scientists use OpenAI models to accelerate breakthroughs, Altman added in the video that he hopes forthcoming AI hardware opens up an “embarrassment of riches of what people go create for collective society.” 

The merger follows several hints from earlier this year signaling OpenAI’s interest in hardware like wearables and robotics. With most major hardware providers launching AI-powered smartphones (despite a few drawbacks), laptops, and other tech, the space is moving quickly. On the more experimental end of that spectrum, AI devices like Humane Pin and Rabbit R1 haven’t exactly succeeded, though health wearables that make use of AI for big-picture insights are taking off. 

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It’s unclear what hardware category OpenAI will target first. The video notes that the two companies won’t release anything until likely next year, though Altman vaguely mentions a prototype of an initial product in the video that he says is “the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, Altman and Ive have discussed camera devices and headphones as possible products, but nothing is confirmed yet. 

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