Billion-euro deal: Ex-Apple design boss Jony Ive and OpenAI join forces

Contents

Former Apple design chief Jony Ive, who shaped the iPhone company's product design, is moving to ChatGPT developer OpenAI. OpenAI will take over the AI device start-up io from Ive. This was announced by Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a joint press release on Wednesday.

As reported by news agency Bloomberg and others, OpenAI will acquire the AI device start-up co-founded by Ive in an almost 6.5 billion US dollar share deal and join forces with the legendary designer to move into the hardware sector. The transaction is expected to close this summer, subject to regulatory approvals. The largest acquisition in OpenAI's history, according to Bloomberg, will give the company a dedicated division for the development of AI-driven devices. The acquisition of io will give OpenAI around 55 hardware engineers, software developers and manufacturing experts – a team that Altman and Ive hope will build a family of devices.

According to the nearly nine-minute video accompanying the announcement, Ive and his design studio LoveFrom will remain independent and take over the design of OpenAI and io, including the software. “I increasingly feel like everything I've learned over the last 30 years has led me to this place and this moment,” Ive said in the joint interview with Altman. “It's a relationship and a way of working together that I think will create products and products and products.”

New AI products planned

The first rumors of Altman and Ive meeting a year ago were later confirmed. According to this, LoveFrom took on a design contract from OpenAI for an unspecified AI product. They apparently also founded a start-up together and raised private funds. At the beginning of April, it was then reported that OpenAI was interested in taking over the stealth spin-off launched by Ive from his design company LoveFrom. The aim is a new type of AI gadget that has no screen, it was said.

“We're obviously still in the final stages of AI interactions,” Altman said. “We haven't figured out what the equivalent of the graphical user interface will be, but we will.” However, the new devices are not intended to replace smartphones: “Just as the smartphone did not replace the laptop, our first product will not replace the smartphone. It's a completely new type of device,” says the OpenAI CEO.

If Altman has his way, OpenAI will create a product at a level of quality “that has never been seen before in consumer hardware”. “AI is such a huge leap forward in terms of what people can do that it's going to take a new kind of computing form factor to realize the maximum potential.”

Smart glasses as one possibility

The announcement of Ive and Altman's collaboration comes at a time when tech companies are increasingly looking to incorporate AI into their software and develop new AI-based products – from smart glasses to jewelry to new types of devices. Google, for example, has just presented its plans for AI-controlled smart glasses at I/O 2025. Users will be able to use the glasses to send messages to friends, make appointments, request directions via Google Maps or take photos. The Ray-Ban Meta glasses with AI function from the US social media company Meta Platforms have already been a bestseller for some time.

It is not yet known what the OpenAI devices might look like. It is likely that the hardware will be designed to support AI applications more efficiently, for example through new user interfaces that are more focused on voice or gesture control. “The products we use to connect us to unimaginable technology are decades old,” Ive said in the video. “So it's only reasonable to at least think that there's something beyond these old products.”

Influential design icon

Ive was Apple's chief designer until six years ago and is considered one of the most influential product designers in tech history. He is responsible for establishing Apple's iconic, sleek aesthetic. Ive played a central role in the apple company's product design – from the iPhone to the iMac to Apple Park, the company's ring-shaped headquarters in Cupertino, California. Ive left the company in 2019 after almost 30 years to found his own company. He initially continued to work for Apple with the design company LoveFrom, a collective of designers and engineers.

Since then, little has become known about Ive and his work. Instead of coming up with his products as announced, he has co-designed a Met Gala or worked on designing a new lightsaber for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”. Last fall, there were reports that Ive had developed a new type of button together with the luxury winter clothing manufacturer Moncler.

Last year, Ive then founded the company io together with former Apple employees Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan. Hankey was Ive's successor at Apple until 2023; Tan, in turn, was responsible for the product design of the iPhone and Apple Watch until 2024. According to Bloomberg, io's goal is to develop and manufacture a range of products for the AI age – a mission that the team will now continue at OpenAI. Their work will thus “become a threat to the devices the designers helped create”, Bloomberg believes, “an additional challenge for Apple, which has fallen behind its Silicon Valley peers in the field of artificial intelligence”. Following the announcement of the collaboration between OpenAI and Ive, Apple shares fell by up to 2.3 percent in New York on Wednesday, having already lost 17 percent this year by the close of trading on Tuesday.

(akn)