Designer Jony Ive, best known for his work on everything from the iMac to the iPhone, wanted to quit Apple before Steve Jobs returned as CEO. Instead, he stuck around at the tech company for nearly three decades and revolutionized consumer electronics.

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.

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.

I really hope OpenAI's new hardware doesn't make me talk to myself in public.

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.

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.

A day later, Jony Ive and Sam Altman kicked down the door and told Google, “Hold my beer.”