Jony Ive and Evans Hankey directly working with OpenAI after AI startup acquisition

OpenAI has announced the first details about its work with Jony Ive. The announcement includes a video that also answers the mystery of what Jony Ive was filming in San Francisco recently. The effort involves Evans Hankey, who briefly replaced Jony Ive at Apple, and comes in the form of a new firm called io that is merging with OpenAI. Jony Ive, OpenAI employee.

Here’s the announcement video:

And here’s a bit from the OpenAI announcement today:

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. 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 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.

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.

Naturally, Mark Gurman at Bloomberg has the best parts of this scoop, reporting that OpenAI is buying the AI startup firm for $6.5 billion.

The deal is expected to be completed this summer, pending regulatory approvals. The takeover of io will provide OpenAI with about 55 hardware engineers, software developers and manufacturing experts — a team that will build what Ive and Altman expect to be a family of devices. The two executives had already been exploring some early ideas for about two years, they said. 

Read Mark’s full report for the nuts and bolts of the deal. More generally, the development does a few things. First, it gives Jony Ive a direct outlet for product creation after Apple that we haven’t seen from his LoveFrom design studio. There’s a big difference between a design firm and this “io” company that’s now being integrated into OpenAI. Second, the move must raise eyebrows at Apple. Will OpenAI draw the talent from Apple that is required to bring hardware to market? That creates tension as Apple relies on ChatGPT for boosting Siri while it finds its footing in AI with Apple Intelligence.