OpenAI has absolutely acquired Io, a three way partnership it cocreated final 12 months with Jony Ive, the famed British designer behind the modern industrial aesthetic that outlined the iPhone and greater than twenty years of Apple merchandise.
In an almost 10-minute video posted to X on Wednesday, Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman mentioned the Apple pioneer’s “inventive collective” will “merge with OpenAI to work extra intimately with the analysis, engineering, and product groups in San Francisco.” OpenAI says it’s paying $5 billion in fairness to accumulate Io.
The promotional video included musings on know-how from each Ive and Altman, set towards the golden-hour backdrop of the streets of San Francisco, however the two by no means share precisely what it’s they’re constructing. “We look ahead to sharing our work subsequent 12 months,” a textual content assertion on the finish of the video reads. Given the pair’s emphasis on constructing a {hardware} system for the AI period, and Ive’s pedigree at Apple, it’s doubtless a consumer-facing product.
Io launched final spring as a part of a joint challenge between OpenAI and Ive’s design agency LoveFrom. Within the fourth quarter of final 12 months, Io and OpenAI entered into an official settlement for OpenAI to obtain a 23 p.c stake in Io. Now OpenAI is shopping for the entity outright.
The merger is a barely sophisticated one. The Io workforce was made up of 55 individuals previous to this announcement. Now it’ll increase to incorporate each Io and OpenAI workers—{hardware} and software program engineers, physicists, scientists, and “consultants in product improvement and manufacturing,” in keeping with a weblog submit on OpenAI’s web site. Ive and Lovefrom will handle the inventive design course of. However Ive will stay unbiased, OpenAI says, and his agency LoveFrom will proceed to function as a separate entity. The Io workforce will as a substitute report back to Peter Welinder, OpenAI’s vp of product, who has labored at OpenAI for eight and a half years.
Io’s founding workforce has main design chops. Past Ive, the founders embody Evans Hankey and Tang Tan, who each labored at Apple. Those that’ve labored carefully with them say they’re identified to rent individuals whom they imagine have distinctive style.
By bringing on Ive, OpenAI is formally embarking on what is probably going one of many extra formidable AI {hardware} challenge so far. Quite a lot of different main tech corporations, together with Meta and Google, have tried creating AI-powered gadgets similar to good glasses in recent times, however mainstream adoption of the know-how has been sluggish and a few gadgets have been affected by glitches.
Humane, one other high-profile AI {hardware} startup based by former Apple workers, debuted a wearable system in late 2023. Reviewers later discovered the system, a pin, was prone to overheating and quite a lot of different points. Lower than two years later Humane’s gadgets had been pulled from the market, and its working system software program and patents had been bought to printer large HP.
The joint effort between Altman and Ive was spurred by developments in AI and likewise compute energy. In its weblog submit, OpenAI wrote that “computer systems at the moment are seeing, pondering and understanding.”
Altman reportedly has {hardware} ambitions past the generative AI software program his firm develops and sells, and Ive has seemingly been desirous to make new imprints within the design world since he left Apple in 2019. “I’ve a rising sense that all the things I’ve discovered over the previous 30 years has led me to this second,” Ive mentioned within the video. “Whereas I’m each anxious and excited concerning the duty of the substantial work forward, I’m so grateful for the chance to be part of such an necessary collaboration.”
