OpenAi to buy iPhone designer Jony Ive's startup for $6.5 billion

Ive and Sam Altman have announced that they have been working on a new generation of AI devices and other alternative products to phones for some time.

Sam and Jony introduce io. With this message and a photo of themselves embracing, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Jony Ive, known for being one of the main designers of the iPhone and current CEO of io Products, announced their union.

The artificial intelligence firm has announced it is in the process of acquiring Ive's startup, for which it will pay $6.5 billion. According to the Financial Times, the ChatGPT maker paid $5 billion after liquidating its 23% stake in io in an all-stock deal.

Altman's company knows that bringing AI to devices beyond mobile devices is a challenge still pending in the industry. And they want to fight that battle. To this end, OpenAI will work closely with Jony Ive with the goal of "creating a family of products for the AGI era," referring to artificial general intelligence, a level of AI that is similar to or surpasses humans.

"Two years ago, Jony Ive and the creative collective LoveFrom began quietly collaborating with Sam Altman and the OpenAI team. A collaboration based on friendship, curiosity, and shared values ​​quickly grew ambitious. Tentative ideas and explorations transformed into tangible designs," explains a statement signed by both executives.

This ambition led Jony Ive to create the startup io Products a year ago, along with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tang Tan, with the clear intention of manufacturing a new family of products. Now, this new family of devices will be designed and launched under the OpenAI umbrella.

"As io merges with OpenAI, Jony and LoveFrom will take on deeper creative and design responsibilities across OpenAI and io," they explain.

This acquisition, OpenAI's largest, will bring Ive's team of approximately 55 engineers, designers, and researchers to assume creative and design responsibilities and build hardware that helps people better interact with technology. According to the Financial Times, Ive will not be joining as an employee.

"The meaning of using technology can change profoundly. I hope we can recapture some of the delight, wonder, and creative spirit I first felt using an Apple computer 30 years ago," says Sam Altman.

Ive, the designer behind many of Apple's best-known products, including the iPhone, left the company in 2019 after nearly three decades.

At the moment, they haven't given any details about what kind of devices they might be working on , but the common idea is to launch a device that revolutionizes the industry like the iPhone did in its day.

The rest of the competitors are also focused on this business, where devices like glasses could usher in the era of ambient computing.