"I believe everything I've done in my career was leading to this," says Jony Ive, the former Apple exec who designed the iPhone. OpenAI is buying Ive's io startup in a deal that could bring artificial intelligence to a new range of devices, moving beyond screens. The deal will bring Ive and his team of around 55 employees, including engineers and scientists, to OpenAI, where they will take over creative and design control, the Wall Street Journal reports. Ive, who left Apple in 2019, co-founded io with three others around a year ago. The deal is worth around $6.5 billion, including the 23% stake OpenAI already has in the company, reports the AP.
OpenAI said CEO Sam Altman has already been "quietly" collaborating with Ive and the design studio he founded, LoveFrom, since 2023. LoveFrom will remain independent under the deal, but it "will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io," OpenAI said. Altman said he hopes the team can "bring some of the delight, wonder and creative spirit that I first felt using an Apple Computer 30 years ago." It's not clear exactly what kind of devices Ive and his team will be creating at OpenAI, though analysts have suggested possibilities including robots and cars, or glasses and pendants that help people interact with AI in different ways.
Ive tells the New York Times that that the goal is to create "amazing products that elevate humanity." He says he worries about what smartphones have done to people, with the devices causing constant stress and distraction. "I shoulder a lot of the responsibility for what these things have brought us," he says. Altman says he wants the new AI devices to help people cut through the noise. Using technology right now, he tells the Times, "feels a lot like being jostled on a crowded street in New York, or being bombarded with notifications and flashing lights in Las Vegas." (More OpenAI stories.)
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