Two years after entering into a collaboration to develop an AI device to succeed the smartphone, OpenAI has agreed to purchase io, Jony Ive’s device and design startup. The $6.4 billion all-stock deal will bring OpenAI to the hardware business and possibly foster the next steps toward ambient computing. “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,” OpenAI announced, adding that Ive will assume “deep creative and design responsibilities across OpenAI and io.”

“OpenAI said it’s paying $5 billion in the transaction, as it already owns 23 percent of the company,” according to CNBC.

Ive’s LoveFrom creative collective will remain independent, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a blog post co-authored by Ive. The duo explain that when OpenAI began its association with Ive and LoveFrom “a collaboration built upon friendship, curiosity and shared values quickly grew in ambition” as “tentative ideas and explorations evolved into tangible designs.”

The scope of the vision — 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,” the post recounts.

Ive is credited with “designing Apple’s most iconic products, including the iPod, iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air” and “also helped design Apple’s new Cupertino headquarters, called Apple Park,” CNBC reports.

The partnership “puts a seasoned designer at the creative helm of a fast-growing startup that aims to one day have a hand in everything from devices to AI-powered robots, AI models with humanlike intelligence and a global network of data centers,” writes The Wall Street Journal.

Altman and Ive are effectively looking beyond the era of smartphones that has held sway since at least 2007, explains The New York Times, noting that “if the two men succeed — and it is a very big if — they could spur what is known as ‘ambient computing,’” producing devices that use AI to “process the world in real time.”

SoftBank, which was involved in funding the 2023 initiative, was not mentioned in the announcement, though having in April invested $30 billion in OpenAI the Japanese investment firm and its CEO Masayoshi Son are onboard for the continuing adventure.

“The purchase is by far OpenAI’s largest and comes weeks after the company agreed to buy AI-assisted coding tool Windsurf for $3 billion,” CNBC writes, referring to a Bloomberg report that has yet to be confirmed by either party.

Related:
Wearables Have Flopped. Can Jony Ive and OpenAI Change That?, Quartz, 5/22/25
OpenAI’s Big Bet That Jony Ive Can Make AI Hardware Work, Wired, 5/21/25
Sam Altman’s $6.4 Billion Bet on Jony Ive Has Zuckerberg-Like Qualities, CNBC, 5/22/25
What Sam Altman Told OpenAI About the Secret Device He’s Making with Jony Ive, Wall Street Journal, 5/21/25