Apple’s former design chief Jony Ive just took over design for all of OpenAI, including its software
OpenAI is buying the AI startup that Apple’s former design chief Jonathan Ive founded two years ago in a deal valued at nearly $6.5 billion.
OpenAI shared the announcement on its website and published a video on X of Jony Ive and Sam Altman introducing the new company. According to Mark Gurman over at Bloomberg, OpenAI is acquiring Ive’s AI startup called io for $6.5 billion.
As a result, Ive will “take over design for all of OpenAI, including its software,” with the first hardware post-acquisition products coming in 2026. Ive co-founded io with his former Apple colleagues Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan. Contrary to some reports, this acquisition deal will not make Ive an OpenAI employee.
Jony Ive just took over all design at OpenAI
Ive said in an interview with Bloomberg that he was fed up with “very poor products” like the Humane Pin and Rabbit R1, saying there’s been “an absence of new ways of thinking expressed in products.”
“I have a growing sense that everything I’ve learned over the last 30 years has led me to this place and to this moment,” Ive said in a joint interview with Altman. “It’s a relationship and a way of working together that I think is going to yield products and products and products.”
Sam & Jony introduce io pic.twitter.com/ej5K59kJq3
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) May 21, 2025
He also reflected on his early days in Silicon Valley. “I am reminded of a time, three decades ago, when I emigrated to America,” said Ive. “As a designer, I was drawn to the exhilarating and innocent optimism of Silicon Valley, to collaborate with people driven to create amazing products that elevate humanity.”
Sam Altman was quoted as saying, “AI is an incredible technology, but great tools require work at the intersection of technology, design and understanding people and the world.” He underscored that “no one can do this like Jony and his team; the amount of care they put into every aspect of the process is extraordinary.”
Altman added that technology can change in profound ways. “I hope we can bring some of the delight, wonder and creative spirit that I first felt using an Apple Computer 30 years ago,” added the OpenAI CEO.
OpenAI’s announcement reads as follows:
Computers are now seeing, thinking and understanding. Despite this unprecedented capability, our experience remains shaped by traditional products and interfaces. Two years ago, Jony Ive and the creative collective LoveFrom, quietly began collaborating with Sam Altman and the team at OpenAI.
It looks like Ive and Altman became friends:
A collaboration built upon friendship, curiosity and shared values quickly grew in ambition. Tentative ideas and explorations evolved into tangible designs. The ideas seemed important and useful. They were optimistic and hopeful. They were inspiring. They made everyone smile. They reminded us of a time when we celebrated human achievement, grateful for new tools that helped us learn, explore and create. It became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company.
And this on founding a new AI startup:
And so, one year ago, Jony founded io with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan. We gathered together the best hardware and software engineers, the best technologists, physicists, scientists, researchers and experts in product development and manufacturing. Many of us have worked closely for decades.
And this:
The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco. As io merges with OpenAI, Jony and LoveFrom will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io. We could not possibly be more excited.
Jony Ive exited Apple in 2019 to focus on his own projects. The famed industrial designer formed a design studio, named LoveFrom, for which he poached many of his colleagues that had worked many years alongside him at Apple. In 2023, it was revealed that Ive and OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman began co-operating on… something.
Ive recently sat down for a one-hour interview at the Stripe Sessions 2025 conference, reflecting on his beginnings as a designer, moving to California and working at Apple, where he would become the chief of all design across the company. Ive revealed in the interview that he made it a rule during his time as the head of Apple’s designs that members of the design team should take turns cooking for each other every morning.
Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2025/05/21/openai-jony-ive-acquisition-deal/
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