OpenAI declared it will put up an astronomical $6.5 billion to merge with Jony Ive and his secretive AI device design company. Ive, who helped bring us legendary products like the iMac and iPhone, will lead the makers of ChatGPT not just in making a better chatbot but in creating a product that “reimagines” a personal computer. Perhaps Ive and Silicon Valley darling OpenAI CEO Sam Altman may finally help us escape our screen addiction, or it could just be another Humane pin.
Altman and Ive came together in a massive media blitz to announce their new match made in heaven. Ive’s company, LoveFrom, alongside other big names in tech design spaces, including former lead iPhone designer Tang Tan, was already working with Altman on this device. Now, the engagement is official. Ive and fellow Apple vets will now be heavily involved in all aspects of OpenAI’s software and hardware development. While LoveFrom is partnered with OpenAI on this project as an independent company, those at Ive’s separate company, “io,” will work hand-in-hand with the makers of ChatGPT to bring forth “a family of products” designed for our current age of AI.
In an announcement video posted to X, Altman said this merger was “formed with the mission of figuring out how to create a family of devices that would let people use AI to create all sorts of wonderful things.” For his part, Ive mentioned that the world is still fixated on a device whose design hasn’t radically changed for well over a decade.
Sam & Jony introduce io pic.twitter.com/ej5K59kJq3
– OPENAI (@OpenAI) May 21, 2025
Ive still hasn’t offered an iota of what this supposed device looks like, what it does, or how it has, in his words, “captured our imagination.” It does exist, it is somehow portable—as Altman said he has used an early prototype—but it will be kept under wraps until some unknown date. The Wall Street Journal reported, based on anonymous sources, that the makers of the still-unknown device want to “move consumers beyond screens.”
OpenAI, under the new big tech chimera spearheaded by Ive and Altman, said this device may not replace smartphones, at least not initially, according to Bloomberg. In the meantime, Ive’s team will “take over” all other design space at OpenAI, including progressing development on ChatGPT. Perhaps these veteran designers can move the chatbot beyond its current iteration as a cheating tool used by students to keep themselves from learning.
As for that unknown AI hardware, we can’t help but remind ourselves about last year’s deluge of AI wearables akin to the Humane AI Pin. That device included connectivity to a chatbot that could also handle light tasks like texts or emails on the behalf of users. The Ai Pin was inundated with problems and sold so poorly that Humane sold itself off to HP for a fraction of its initial $850 billion valuation.
In the interview with Bloomberg, Ive said the Humane Ai Pin and fellow AI-centric doohickey, the Rabbit R1, were both “very poor products.” He further added, “there has been an absence of new ways of thinking expressed in products.” Without actual product details, prospective customers will just have to take his word for it.
In a recent interview with Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, the man who worked alongside Steve Jobs to create the original iPhone aired his grievances with the screen-obsessed world he helped create. He called out social media as a societal ill, and maybe he can convince the company to quash its reported plans for a Twitter clone.
