Sir Jony Ive, the famed designer behind many of Apple’s most iconic products, is teaming up with AI leader OpenAI in a high-profile effort to reimagine the future of consumer technology. The partnership, announced Wednesday, includes OpenAI’s acquisition of io, a hardware startup co-founded by Ive, in a deal reportedly valued at $6.4 billion.
The acquisition marks OpenAI’s most aggressive step yet toward building its own AI-native devices—and positions it in direct competition with Big Tech’s biggest names, including Ive’s former employer, Apple Inc.
“We have the opportunity here to completely re-imagine what it means to use a computer,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a video statement.
Following the announcement, Apple shares fell more than 2%, reflecting growing investor concern that the iPhone maker is falling behind in the AI hardware race.
A Design Legend Returns
Sir Jony Ive, the British designer credited with shaping Apple’s most iconic products—from the iMac and iPod to the iPhone and Apple Watch—left Apple in 2019 to form the design firm LoveFrom. While LoveFrom will remain independent, Ive will now assume “deep creative and design responsibilities” across OpenAI’s hardware ambitions.
The collaboration builds on several years of quiet partnership between Ive and Altman, culminating in the creation of io, which they described as a response to their shared belief that existing companies were not equipped to build the next wave of intelligent devices.
“It became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company,” the companies said in a joint statement.
From Software to Silicon
OpenAI, best known as the creator of ChatGPT, has focused primarily on software and AI research until now. But with the io acquisition, the company is laying the groundwork for a new hardware division aimed at designing devices specifically for AI-driven interaction.
While few details have been revealed, the new products are expected to go beyond traditional screens and keyboards, embracing voice, gestures, and ambient computing. Industry analysts say OpenAI could be aiming to launch a category-defining product similar in impact to the iPhone.
“The world is on the brink of a new generation of technology,” Ive said in the announcement video.
A Strategic Shift
Prior to the acquisition, OpenAI already held a 23% stake in io. The new deal gives OpenAI full control, absorbing the startup’s team of roughly 55 engineers and designers—many of them Apple alumni—into a new hardware unit led by OpenAI’s Peter Welinder.
The first products from the partnership are expected to debut in 2026.
As the AI arms race accelerates, this high-profile merger signals OpenAI’s intention to compete not just in intelligence, but in experience—designing tools that feel less like machines and more like seamless extensions of the human mind.
