Here’s why OpenAI bought a secret startup from Jony Ive

OpenAI has recently bought io – a previously largely anonymous secret startup created by iPhone designer Jony Ive – to enhance product distribution and user reach as the focus shifts away from technology and onto its dispersion.

As it happens, io is an artificial intelligence (AI) hardware startup developed by the former Apple design chief Jony Ive, and Sam Altman’s OpenAI announced the purchase, worth nearly $6.5 billion, via a post on the OpenAI website and a YouTube video on May 21.

Specifically, Ive and his design firm, LoveFrom, started working with Altman and his AI company in 2023, before IO’s launch in 2024, which Ive founded with Scott Cannon, Tang Tan, and Evans Hankey. As a reminder, Ive had been with Apple – where he was instrumental to creating the iMac and iPhone – for almost 30 years before leaving it in 2019.

Purchasing io from Jony Ive

According to the press release, the purpose of io merging with OpenAI is to “work more intimately with the research, engineering, and product teams in San Francisco,” and that “Jony and LoveFrom will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io.”

That said, it might also have to do with the efforts to more efficiently place ChatGPT and other OpenAI models and products into the hands of users, as AI models become less distinctive among each other and the AI race moves into the field of distribution instead.

Notably, Apple’s iPhone, designed by Ives, is an ideal means of tech distribution and achieving direct relationship with users, so io could be the answer to OpenAI’s prayers in order to continue proliferating and further advancing its AI.

Additionally, io’s emphasis on gadgets could indicate that OpenAI is looking to introduce in-house smart devices equipped with its AI but without having to pay a chunky fee to a middleman like Apple to distribute it, which is the case with Meta and Google. Even the duo itself suggested as much:

“It became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer, and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company.”

Meanwhile, OpenAI has continued to work on its products, including releasing its voice-to-video model Sora in February, as well as unveiling a novel approach to AI oversight called chain-of-thought (CoT) monitoring and introducing new tools for building AI agents in March.