OpenAI is acquiring Jony Ive and Sam Altman's startup, io, which will lead creative and design work for OpenAI.

OpenAI said it was buying IO, a start-up founded by Mr. Ive, the designer of the iPhone, to usher in a new era of artificial intelligence hardware.

Altman and Ive announced OpenAI’s acquisition of Ive’s io in a statement Wednesday, with the deal valued at roughly $6.5 billion after OpenAI acquired 23% of io in a partnership deal in 2024.

I really hope OpenAI's new hardware doesn't make me talk to myself in public.

More details are trickling out about Jony Ive and Sam Altman’s new AI device. In a post on Thursday, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says his research indicates that the device could be larger than Humane’s AI pin, but with a “form factor as compact and elegant as an iPod Shuffle.”

Hours after Sam Altman and Jony Ive announced on Wednesday that OpenAI was buying Ive’s company, io, in an all-stock transaction valued at $6.5 billion, Investors were happy about the hefty returns they got from the sale of io to OpenAI.

AI gadgets are back, baby! Or that’s what Jony Ive and Sam Altman hope. Well, they may not really hope they’re back as much as they hope they’re not completely and utterly cooked. ICYMI, Ive and OpenAI’s CEO,

There have been public failures as well, such as the Humane AI Pin and the Rabbit R1 personal assistant device. “Those were very poor products,” said Ive, 58. “There has been an absence of new ways of thinking expressed in products.”