OpenAI is shopping for io, an AI system startup based by iPhone designer Jony Ive, in a $6.5 billion all-stock deal as OpenAI makes an attempt to outline the AI-powered units market. OpenAI acquired a 23% stake in io final yr and invested within the startup at the moment.
The acquisition is the largest in OpenAI’s history and was introduced on Wednesday, mere weeks after OpenAI agreed to purchase AI-assisted coding instrument Windsurf for about $3 billion. The deal is meant to spark a brand new era of merchandise for a future the place AI know-how attains or surpasses human intelligence.
As a part of the acquisition, Ive and his staff of about 55 engineers, designers, and researchers will be a part of OpenAI in artistic and design roles that enable them to form AI units for shoppers. They’ll construct {hardware} that helps folks work together with ChatGPT extra intuitively, with out having to go on an online browser or an app on their telephones.
Jony Ive. Photograph by Lia Toby/BFC/Getty Pictures
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Ive have been collaborating for 2 years on a secretive challenge to maneuver folks past screens and into different varieties of AI-powered units. The Wall Street Journal experiences that the 2 have been contemplating AI headphones and different devices with cameras.
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In a release video on Wednesday asserting the deal, Altman referred to as Ive “the deepest thinker of anybody I’ve ever met,” and Ive complimented Altman in flip, calling him “a visionary.”
“I feel we now have the chance right here to utterly reimagine what it means to make use of a pc,” Altman mentioned within the video.
Whereas each had been quiet in regards to the particulars of a household of latest AI merchandise, they teased that the merchandise had been groundbreaking and would arrive someday subsequent yr. Altman went so far as to name one unnamed product he interacted with “the best piece of know-how the world has ever seen.”
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Ive began working at Apple in 1992 and performed a vital position in designing the iPhone, iPad, iMac, and different Apple merchandise. He left in 2019 to create his personal design agency, LoveFrom, which has since landed deals with Airbnb and Ferrari.
Altman has explored AI units earlier than. In 2020, he invested within the startup Humane, which developed an Ai Pin that fell flat with consumers because of overheating points and a lagging interface.
OpenAI reported final month that ChatGPT had 500 million global weekly users.
OpenAI is shopping for io, an AI system startup based by iPhone designer Jony Ive, in a $6.5 billion all-stock deal as OpenAI makes an attempt to outline the AI-powered units market. OpenAI acquired a 23% stake in io final yr and invested within the startup at the moment.
The acquisition is the largest in OpenAI’s history and was introduced on Wednesday, mere weeks after OpenAI agreed to purchase AI-assisted coding instrument Windsurf for about $3 billion. The deal is meant to spark a brand new era of merchandise for a future the place AI know-how attains or surpasses human intelligence.
As a part of the acquisition, Ive and his staff of about 55 engineers, designers, and researchers will be a part of OpenAI in artistic and design roles that enable them to form AI units for shoppers. They’ll construct {hardware} that helps folks work together with ChatGPT extra intuitively, with out having to go on an online browser or an app on their telephones.
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