io becomes io Products: OpenAI completes takeover of Jony Ive's start-up
Less than two months after the announcement, OpenAI has completed the takeover of a company owned by Jony Ive. However, this did not go entirely smoothly.
This is how Altman and Ive announced their collaboration
(Image: OpenAI)
OpenAI has completed the billion-euro acquisition of designer legend Jony Ive's hardware company io, but is calling the company “io Products” due to a naming rights dispute. This was announced by the AI company on the relaunched website on which the deal was announced at the end of May. They are very pleased that the “io Products” team has officially merged with that of OpenAI, it says. Ive and his company, LoveForm, themselves remain independent but have taken on “extensive design and creative tasks” for OpenAI. It is not clear from the brief announcement whether the name io Products will be retained for the start-up, which is actually called io.
io Products instead of io
The cooperation between OpenAI and Jony Ive is primarily about the development of hardware for AI use. To this end, OpenAI has acquired the start-up io, which Ive co-founded, for 6.5 billion US dollars. Following the now publicized completion of the takeover, OpenAI now has its own department for the development of AI-controlled devices. These should soon be ubiquitous and bring the use of AI into everyday life. More details are not yet known, but it has already been assured that the first device will be neither an “in-ear device” nor a “wearable”. It will not be launched on the market before 2026.
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The takeover was overshadowed by a name dispute with a company called “iYo”. This company is also developing a device for the use of AI, namely headphones that can be controlled by natural language. At the end of June, iYo was able to convince a judge in California that there was too great a risk of confusion due to the identical names iYo and io. As a result, OpenAI took the page offline on which the deal with Ive was presented. The text published there is now back online, but in one place the company name “io” has been replaced by “io Products”; in Wednesday's update, only this name appears.
(mho)
