Jony Ive, a former Apple executive known for designing the iPhone, is joining forces with OpenAI, the San Francisco startup behind popular chatbot ChatGPT.
On Wednesday, OpenAI said it’s buying io, an AI devices startup that Ive founded a year ago, for nearly $6.5 billion in an all-stock deal, the largest acquisition in OpenAI’s history.
“We have the opportunity here to kind of completely reimagine what it means to use a computer,” OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said in a video with Ive about the partnership.
The pair don’t specify what AI devices they’re working on, but Altman called it “the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen.”
The partnership shows how OpenAI is taking on some of the world’s most powerful tech companies including Google, Apple and Meta that are also working on AI-powered devices to shape the future of computing.
Chirag Dekate, a VP analyst at Gartner, said the announcement reflected an “inflection point” in the tech industry, where future products and services will offer users more personalized and proactive assistance.
“This shift suggests a future where technology is less about the tools themselves and more about the intelligently orchestrated experiences they enable,” he said in an email.
Globally, spending on generative AI is expected to total $644 billion in 2025, an increase of 76.4% from 2024, according to a forecast by Gartner, a research and advisory firm based in Connecticut that focuses on technology.
The race to build AI-powered wearable gadgets and roll out more AI tools that can generate video, text and code and help people shop also means that major tech companies are recruiting top-tier talent. Earlier in May, OpenAI hired Fidji Simo, a former top Meta executive and the chief executive of grocery delivery startup Instacart, to lead the startup’s applications team.
Ive, a British American designer, is a well-known figure in the tech industry because he designed some of Apple’s iconic products such as the Macbook, iPhone, iPad and iPod. Joining Apple in the 1990s, Ive became Apple’s chief design officer in 2015.
He left the company in 2019 and started LoveFrom, a creative collective and design firm that worked with brands including OpenAI.
Silicon Valley tech companies have been working on gadgets, including headsets and glasses, for years but they’re still not as ubiquitous as the smartphone.
There have also been major flops such as Humane’s AI pin, a wearable virtual voice-operated assistant that was criticized for various issues such as providing inaccurate information and overheating. In February, San Francisco-based Humane shut down the AI pin after it was acquired by Hewlett-Packard.
But the fumbles haven’t stopped tech companies from barreling forward with building glasses, brain-computer interfaces and humanoid robots as they look to a future beyond the smartphone.
When Google released smart glasses in 2013 that could shoot photos and videos, the company faced concerns about people using the device to surreptitiously record other people or read text while ignoring others.
But the gadget resurfaced years later. This week, Google unveiled a prototype of its AI smart glasses at its annual I/O developer conference in Mountain View, demonstrating how people can use the device to search for information about a painting, travel and other topics without having to type on their smartphone. The search giant is partnering with eyewear brands Warby Parker and Gentle Monster on smart glasses.
Last year, Santa Monica-based Snap unveiled the fifth generation of Spectacles, its augmented reality glasses that overlay digital objects on the physical world. The device, which was only available for developers, allowed people to play with virtual pets, conjure up images with a voice command or swing a virtual golf club.
Meta teamed up with Ray-Ban on smart glasses that include an AI assistant that can answer questions, translate and help take a photo. It’s also working on a more powerful pair of AR glasses that lets people take video calls, get recipe recommendations and multitask in other ways.
And Apple, which unveiled a pricey mixed-reality headset known as the Vision Pro in 2023, is also reportedly working on smart glasses.
In the video with Altman, Ive said the products that people use to connect to technology are decades old, so it’s “just common sense to at least think surely there’s something beyond these legacy products.”
“I have a growing sense that everything I’ve learned over the last 30 years has led me to this place and to this moment,” Ive said in the video.
