OpenAI Acquires Jony Ive’s AI Device Startup for $6.4B

About two years ago, Jony Ive’s son was so enthralled with OpenAI’s ChatGPT that he told his dad, “You’ve got to meet Sam.”

That would be OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Ive, the former chief design officer at Apple and a protégé of Steve Jobs. The two had a meeting, agreeing that a new generation of devices were in order for the AI era.

In a Wednesday (May 21) video, Altman and Ive talked about how their relationship began two years ago. The OpenAI CEO also said that to use ChatGPT today, a user had to turn on a computer, open a web browser, go to ChatGPT’s website, type in a query and then wait for an answer.

Altman believes there’s a better way to access AI.

“I think we have the opportunity here to kind of completely reimagine what it means to use a computer,” he said.

Ive, who led the design of the iPhone, iPod, iPad and Apple Watch, called Altman “a rare visionary” with whom he would like to partner.

The result was io, an AI device startup that Ive created in the spring of 2024 with Apple designers Scott Cannon (who co-founded Mailbox), Evans Hankey and Tang Tan to develop a new family of products for the artificial general intelligence (AGI) era.

According to a Wednesday Bloomberg report, OpenAI said it was acquiring io for just under $6.5 billion, OpenAI’s largest acquisition to date. Io will become the devices division at OpenAI, led by Peter Welinder, who will report to Altman.

OpenAI had reportedly considered buying the the startup in April, according to PYMNTS reporting at the time.

Ive and LoveFrom, the design company he founded after leaving Apple in 2019, will take over design and creative initiatives at OpenAI but stay as an independent firm. LoveFrom is separate from io.

After Ive left Apple, both said they would continue to collaborate, but nothing came from it.

Now, OpenAI has stepped into the gap as Apple continues to struggle with deploying generative AI throughout its devices. In afternoon trading, shares of Apple fell 2% to $202.44.

For io, Ive and the rest of his 55-person team plan to show “what they’ve been working on” in 2026.