Jony Ive's career was mainly at Apple, designing products like the iPhone and Mac. Now he'll work at OpenAI, which bought his AI device startup io.

OpenAI is acquiring Jony Ive and Sam Altman's startup, io, which will lead creative and design work for OpenAI.

OpenAI forms a new hardware division with the io team, led by Jony Ive, to develop AI-native devices, possibly launching a voice-first product as early as 2026.

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.

With Ive leading design, OpenAI aims to pair the tech behind its ChatGPT chatbot with product design expertise that made the iPhone a bestseller.

OpenAI said it was buying IO, a start-up founded by Mr. Ive, the designer of the iPhone, to usher in a new era of artificial intelligence hardware.

More details are trickling out about Jony Ive and Sam Altman’s new AI device. In a post on Thursday, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says his research indicates that the device could be larger than Humane’s AI pin, but with a “form factor as compact and elegant as an iPod Shuffle.”

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?