Altman and Ive announced OpenAI’s acquisition of Ive’s io in a statement Wednesday, with the deal valued at roughly $6.5 billion after OpenAI acquired 23% of io in a partnership deal in 2024.

Did Sam Altman just figure out what AI's been missing? Or did he get locked into the very thinking he's spent his career avoiding?

OpenAI's acquisition of Ive's io startup could disrupt Google and Apple's strategies, impacting the tech landscape and raising stakes in the AI race.

Jony Ive became renowned for a meticulous design aesthetic that shaped the cultural zeitgeist during a 27-year career at Apple, which he left in 2019.

Here’s what we know: it’s probably not smart glasses. Beyond that, we don’t know much about what Jony Ive and OpenAI are building through their newly combined company io, except that it’s some kind of AI super-gadget. But after a couple of years of watching the industry try and shove AI into every form factor you can imagine, we have some guesses.

Well-funded and big-name partnerships often end in failure. And ex-Apple employees don’t have a great record of success.

OpenAI said it was buying IO, a start-up founded by Mr. Ive, the designer of the iPhone, to usher in a new era of artificial intelligence hardware.