OpenAI acquires Jony Ive’s hardware firm, io, to create AI devices

It was perhaps the worst kept secret in Silicon Valley. When he wasn’t running his design firm LoveFrom, Jony Ive was building another new company, just around the corner in San Francisco’s Jackson Square, called io. Focused on the future of AI hardware—what some have oversimplified as the iPhone of AI—io was rumored to be the physical side of OpenAI’s groundbreaking software.

Now, the rumors are reality. OpenAI is acquiring io for $6.5 billion. From a news release:

The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco.

As io merges with OpenAI, Jony and LoveFrom will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io. LoveFrom will remain independent.

It became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company. And so, one year ago, Jony founded io with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan.

Scott Cannon led teams on the Mac and iPad development. Evans Hankey was a senior member of the Apple design team who took over Ive’s own role after he left Apple. Tang Tan led design on the iPhone for years. It takes no keen analysis to observe how proven and talented this team is at shipping impactful products. But what are they doing with OpenAI, exactly?

The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco.

As io merges with OpenAI, Jony and LoveFrom will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io.

In other words, io will be making products, plural, for OpenAI, with an undisclosed timeline for release.

What it all adds up to is, perhaps, the greatest called bluff in Silicon Valley history. Ive had already brought much of his design team with him when he founded LoveFrom. And others he brought to io.

Now, the most hyped AI company of our age is teaming up with the makers of the most defining consumer hardware of the last century. 

Whatever they build together will define both of their legacies to come.

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