Operai will acquire the device startup co -founded by Apple Inc. veteran Jony Ive in an agreement of almost $ 6.5 billion throughout the stock, joining forces with the legendary designer to boost the hardware.
The purchase, the largest in the history of OpenAi, will provide the company with a dedicated unit to develop devices with AI. The acquisition of the Secret Startup, called IO, will also ensure the services of IVE and other Apple designers who were behind iconic products such as the iPhone.
“I have the growing feeling that everything I have learned in the last 30 years led me to this place already,” ID said in a joint interview with Openi’s executive director, Sam Altman. “It is a relationship and a way of working together that I think will produce products, products and products.”
For the designer born in British, the measure marks a high profile return to a consumer technology industry that helped to be a pioneer. Working for years with Steve Jobs, he created the appearance of the modern smartphone, in addition to the iPod, iPad and Apple Watch. He left Apple in 2019.
When Apple left, CEO Tim Cook launched the idea that the two parties would continue to be collaborators. But they never launched a product together after IVE departure. And now the designer is embarking on a new collaboration with Altman, who calls a “rare visionary.”
Jobs was described by Jobs as his “spiritual partner”, and his new design period of rival technology products could be seen as a bad omen for Apple, a company that already struggles to compete in AI. In the interview, Altman said Jobs would be “very proud” or the last movement of IVE.
Operai will create a product at a quality level that “has never happened before in the consumer hardware,” Altman said. “AI is a great leap forward in terms of what people can do and that needs a new computing factor to get maximum potential,” he said.
As part of the agreement, Openai is paying $ 5 billion in capital per Io. The voice balance of almost $ 6.5 billion of an association reached the fourth quarter of last year that Openai involved acquire a 23% participation in IO.
Separately, the OpenAi startup fund also invested in the IVE company at that time. The philanthropist of billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs is also an IO sponsor, through her firm The Emerson Collective. Other investors include Sutter Hill Ventures, Thrive Capital, Maverick Capital and SV Angel. Altman has no equity in IO, said Openai.
The agreement is expected to be complete this summer, waiting for regulatory approvals. The IO acquisition will provide OpenNAI approximately 55 hardware engineers, software developers and manufacturing experts, a team that will build what IVE and Altman expect to be a family of devices. The two executives had already been exploring some early ideas for approximately two years, they said.
The couple expects their first device to be a truly new type of product. “People have appetite for something new, which is a reflection on a type or concern with the place where we are currently,” said IVE, referring to the products available today. The first IVE and Altman devices are scheduled to debut in 2026.
When he left Apple six years ago, I started the firm love of designers and engineers. The staff includes veterans from Apple hardware and software departments, as well as Friends of Ive and other collaborators.
Then he has co-founded last year with the former Apple Student Student acquired by Dropx.
In IO, the group set out to develop, engineering and manufacturer a collection of products for an era or artificial general intelligence, the point where technology achieves cognitive skills as human. The team will now continue that mission in Openai, becoming a threat to the same devices that designers helped create.
That adds to Apple’s challenges, which has stayed behind his fellow Silicon Valley in artificial intelligence. The company AI platform, launched last year, lacks the capabilities of rival systems and depends in part of Openai chatbot chatbot to fill the gaps.
Even so, Ive and Altman do not see that the iPhone disappears in the short term. “In the same way that the smartphone did not make the laptop disappear, I don’t think the first thing is to make the smartphone disappear,” Altman said. “He is a totally new child of things.”
“The phone, as it is currently, is a remarkable general purfosa device,” said Ive, adding that people will connect with “very new ways.”
OpenAI, founded a decade ago as a research organization, became a driving force in AI with the launch of Chatgpt in 2022. The company’s valuation has increased to $ 300 billion, and is looking to expand its scope through acquisitions. OpenAI is working on other transactions, such as a $ 3 billion agreement for the IA Windsurf coding software.
Operai also shook his management ranks this month, with the company based in San Francisco appointing the Chief of Instacart, Fidji Simo, as CEO of Applications. She informs Altman directly, which allows her to concentrate on the broader strategy.
Hankey, who will become an Openai employee along with Tan and Cannon, said the Chatgpt debut caused an understanding that hardware technology would have to change. “Several of us looked at each other and said:” This is probably the most incredible technology of our career, “he said in an interview.
While IVE and Lovefrom will remain independent, they will take design for all OpenAi, including their software. Altman said his first conversations with IVE were not hardware, but rather how to improve the chatgpt interface.
“Obviously we are still in the terminal phase of AI interactions,” said Altman, 40. “We have not yet discovered what the user graphic interface equivalent will be, but we will.”
Lovefrom has several former Apple designers who helped create the appearance of Mac and iPhone operating systems, including Bas Ording, Mike Matas and Chris Wilson, said IVE. They could help redesign Openai’s application for a new generation of consumers.
Lovefrom will continue its existing relationships with clients such as Ferrari NV and Airbnb Inc., but won in the main new clients. The new hardware team within OpenAI will be supervised by Peter Welinder, who will inform Altman as product vice president.
He said that Chatgpt was initially placed on his radar for one of his twin children, Charlie, and immediately knew that he had to meet Altman after using it. The new Operai team will work in the existing work space in Jackson Square, a neighborhood in San Francisco and the current OpenAi offices.
“I have felt that my most important and useful work is ahead,” IVE said, added that it is “leg training” for this moment. Compare the experience with Apple in the late 1990s and early 2000s, before the iPod and the iPhone. “I am very, very grateful that we have all met.”
Ive and Altman would do it in the hardware products they are working on, but they will enter a market in their childhood. Meta Platforms Inc., the owner of Facebook and Instagram, is perhaps the most notable manufacturer of AI devices. Sale to the popular Ray-Ban smart glasses that use cameras and microphones to provide context on the surrounding environment.
It also has public failures in the legs, such as the humanitarian pin and the Rabbit R1 personal assistant device. “Those were very poor products,” said IVE, 58. “There has been bone an absence of new ways of thinking expressed in products.”
So, it was central to develop each version of the iPhone within the Apple hardware engineering department, he said that the new team is not linked to a “legacy” and will have the opportunity to “rethink this space.” Even so, delivering a product will take time.
“It will be for wait,” Altman said. “It’s a crazy and anatic things to do.”
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Posted on May 21, 2025