OpenAI Spent $6.5B on a Device That Doesn’t Exist Yet
OpenAI bought Jony Ive’s company for $6.5 billion, but there is no product, price, or release date. So what exactly is it buying?
OpenAI is paying $6.5 billion for Jony Ive’s company.
But no one knows what kind of device will come out of it.
At Apple, Ive designed products including the iMac, iPod, and iPhone. He left in 2019 and took part of his design team with him. Now he will build a family of devices for OpenAI, designed specifically around ChatGPT.
It is OpenAI’s largest acquisition to date.
Yet there is still no design. No name. No price. No release date. Even the features of the first device have not been revealed.
Meanwhile, Sam Altman is already calling the project “the coolest piece of technology the world will have ever seen.” OpenAI also says ChatGPT deserves better hardware than a laptop or smartphone.
That is where the real shift lies.
OpenAI apparently does not just want to build the AI people use. It also wants to build the device on which people use that AI every day. With more than 500 million weekly ChatGPT users, it already has an enormous pool of potential customers.
At the same time, Apple is struggling to integrate AI properly into the iPhone. While Apple wrestles with that challenge, OpenAI is bringing in the designer of the iPhone itself.
For now, OpenAI is not buying a visible product. It is buying a designer, a team, and the opportunity to create a completely new kind of device.
What would an AI device need to do before you would put down your smartphone for it?
#OpenAI #JonyIve #ChatGPT #AIHardware
