What Will Sam and Jony Build?

Just as the web was once born through the personal computer and the cloud era ushered in the smartphone, OpenAI believes the next technological platform demands new hardware—and that Jony Ive, the creator of the iPhone and other iconic Apple devices, is uniquely capable of designing it. In a promo video released by OpenAI, Ive and the company’s CEO Sam Altman stroll leisurely through San Francisco’s North Beach to grab coffee at Zoetrope, a café owned by Francis Ford Coppola. In their conversation, Ive says that humanity continues to engage with the "unimaginable technologies" of artificial intelligence using "decades-old" devices—PCs and smartphones—and that it is therefore "entirely logical" to seek something fundamentally new, beyond those obsolete products.

Betting on hardware is not a new idea for Altman. He was one of the first investors in the startup Humane, which developed the failed Ai Pin, and he also co-founded Worldcoin, a project promoting spherical iris scanners to verify human identity in a bot-saturated world. At OpenAI’s first-ever developer conference in 2023, Altman said that every platform shift has historically been accompanied by the emergence of new types of devices: "If something amazing can be built, we will build it." Soon after, OpenAI revived its hardware and robotics division, hiring former Meta executive Caitlin Kalinowski.

Little is known about Altman and Ive’s startup, called io. The collaboration was announced last year, but details remain tightly guarded. What’s known is that the product under development is not a smartphone. According to The Wall Street Journal, it could be headphones or another type of device with integrated cameras. The io deal is massive in scale: OpenAI will pay $5 billion in stock for the remaining stake in the company it doesn’t yet own (it previously acquired a 23% share through an exclusive partnership agreement reached late last year). Once the deal closes—expected this summer—the 55-person team will join OpenAI under the leadership of Peter Welinder, who will also oversee Kalinowski. Ive and his firm LoveFrom will lead the design of OpenAI’s products while remaining independent and continuing their other projects.

OpenAI isn’t the only company thinking beyond the smartphone. Despite fading hype around the metaverse, the VR headset market remains active, and the "smart" glasses segment—from Meta to Apple—continues to evolve as a potential interface for AI services. But this deal also marks the final break between Ive and Apple, a process that began in 2019, and his full alignment with a new contender for tech leadership. OpenAI’s video deliberately frames Altman and Ive as the successors to the Steve Jobs–Jony Ive partnership, casting Altman as the new visionary—and Apple as merely a seller of "devices from the past."

The company has promised to unveil the first results of its new hardware initiative as early as next year. Though it remains unclear when those products will actually reach the market.