OpenAI is formally stepping into the {hardware} enterprise.
In a video posted to X on Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and former Apple designer Jony Ive, who labored on flagship merchandise just like the iPhone, revealed a partnership to create the subsequent technology of AI-enabled units.
The AI software program firm introduced it’s merging with io, an under-the-radar startup targeted on AI units that Ive based a 12 months in the past alongside a number of companions. Within the video, Altman and Ive say they’ve been “quietly” collaborating for 2 years. As a part of the deal, Ive and people at his design agency, LoveFrom, will stay impartial however will tackle artistic roles at OpenAI.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET’s mum or dad firm, filed an April 2025 lawsuit in opposition to OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in coaching and working its AI programs.
“The io workforce, targeted on creating merchandise that encourage, empower, and allow, will now merge with OpenAI to work extra intimately with the analysis, engineering, and product groups in San Francisco,” OpenAI wrote in an accompanying weblog submit concerning the merger. The submit didn’t supply many extra particulars.
Notably, the announcement comes as Google’s annual developer convention, named I/O, remains to be underway.
“I need this to be democratized, I need everybody to have it,” Altman says within the video, referring to the {hardware} OpenAI goals to construct underneath the brand new partnership. Earlier this month, OpenAI moved to turn out to be a Public Profit Company (PBC), saying the shift with comparable language about making AI accessible to as many individuals as attainable and targeted on social betterment objectives. Traditionally, know-how of that caliber takes some time to turn out to be really accessible and intuitive for giant teams of individuals to make use of, and present AI units just like the iPhone 16 require particular, costly {hardware} to run.
Emphasizing how scientists use OpenAI fashions to speed up breakthroughs, Altman added within the video that he hopes forthcoming AI {hardware} opens up an “embarrassment of riches of what folks go create for collective society.”
The merger follows a number of hints from earlier this 12 months signaling OpenAI’s curiosity in {hardware} like wearables and robotics. With most main {hardware} suppliers launching AI-powered smartphones (regardless of just a few drawbacks), laptops, and different tech, the area is shifting rapidly. On the extra experimental finish of that spectrum, AI units like Humane Pin and Rabbit R1 have not precisely succeeded, although well being wearables that make use of AI for big-picture insights are taking off.
It is unclear what {hardware} class OpenAI will goal first. The video notes that the 2 corporations will not launch something till seemingly subsequent 12 months, although Altman vaguely mentions a prototype of an preliminary product within the video that he says is “the good piece of know-how that the world could have ever seen.”
In line with the Wall Avenue Journal, Altman and Ive have mentioned digital camera units and headphones as attainable merchandise, however nothing is confirmed but.
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