OpenAI, once more, makes headlines, although this time it has little to do with fine-tuning ChatGPT or improving artificial intelligence models. The pioneer in AI conversations aims to do something entirely different this time: hardware.
OpenAI is paying $6.5 billion to acquire io Products, a startup created by renowned iPhone mastermind Jony Ive, which sells itself as having come up with the next-generation device to conceptualize how humanity will experience AI.
This isn’t another purchase by a tech giant, it’s an ambitious one, and it may transform the way we experience AI in our day-to-day reality. Two years ago, Jony Ive and creative collective LoveFrom, in secret, started to work alongside Sam Altman and the OpenAI team. It was tentative experiments at first, and it’s become an out-and-out hardware project to deliver AI beyond our screens.
OpenAI and Jony Ive Partner on New Hardware
The rumors have been rampant, and news in recent days provides an intriguing glimpse of OpenAI’s hardware plans. OpenAI has also pondered creating glasses, a voice recorder, and a wearable pin, and plans to launch its initial products in late 2026 or early 2027. The headliner, though, seems to be something entirely different than familiar fare.
Their initial product will be a screenless smart speaker as an AI companion, and it has been developed by one of the most renowned designers, Jony Ive, who happens to have been the chief design head at Apple at one point in time. Just imagine – it will be a voice interaction and AI-intelligence-driven smart speaker without any screen. It’s quite risky move in today’s world of screens.
That product slate doesn’t end there, though. We’re also seeing smart glasses in the future, as well as a digital voice recorder and even a wearable pin. These aren’t miscellaneous gadgets, though, as they’re part of an overarching conceptual framework for how AI can be more naturally incorporated into our day-to-day life without us needing to constantly look at screens.
OpenAI Adopts Apple’s Strategy for Hardware Push
Luxshare, a key Apple partner, has already agreed to build at least one OpenAI device. Goertek, another Apple supplier, has been approached for speaker modules.
This supply chain framework makes complete sense. Far from starting from scratch, OpenAI is employing the identical production facility that has produced billions of iPhones, AirPods, and Apple Watches.
Luxshare, as it produces iPhones, AirPods, and Apple Watches today, provides economies of scale and supply expertise, which OpenAI lacks completely, in order to rival competitors in the hardware business.
Talent acquisition has also been impressive. Since the io acquisition, OpenAI has increased hiring from across Apple’s products and operating teams. At least 25 ex-Apple personnel have been known to have joined the cause in 2025, representing human interface design, audio, wearables, and scale-up manufacturing experience.
You would have to wonder why OpenAI, which has enjoyed unprecedented success in software and in models of artificial intelligence, would plunge into the notoriously competitive hardware business. The answer lies in the competitive arena and in future human-computer interaction.
A new OpenAI hardware division
Apple, Google, Meta, and Amazon are all investing aggressively in the future of interfaces in computing. The future battlefield upon which AI will be lost or won is in smart glasses, wearable computers, and voice-first interfaces. OpenAI, by remaining purely software, risks being another API provider as others own the experience of the user.
The hardware push also makes sense from a user experience perspective. According to the Times profile, Ive and Altman discussed leveraging generative AI to create a computing device that surpasses traditional software by handling complex user requests more efficiently. When you control both the hardware and the AI software, you can create more seamless, intuitive experiences that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.
Jony Ive and OpenAI, Crafting a New Paradigm for AI
This hardware initiative of OpenAI, apart from being an effort of company diversification, marks also a paradigm shift in terms of how we would one day, in the future, interface with AI. Where today we interface somewhat limitedly through typing on keyboards or touching screens, OpenAI envisions an era in which AI becomes part and parcel of our environment through voice, through gesture, and through ambient computing.
If this vision materializes or not, time will tell, but having Jony Ive’s design acumen, Apple’s established supply chain, and OpenAI’s AI expertise, it has put all the correct ingredients in place for success. The coming years will tell if OpenAI can convert software supremacy to hardware innovation to transform how we live and work based on artificial intelligence.
