OpenAI reportedly mulls shopping for Jony Ive and Sam Altman’s AI {hardware} startup

OpenAI is claimed to have mentioned buying the AI {hardware} startup that former Apple design lead Jony Ive is constructing with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. According to The Information, OpenAI may pay round $500 million for the fledgling firm, referred to as io Merchandise.

Ive, who left Apple in 2019 to start his own design firm called LoveFrom, confirmed that he was working with Altman on the AI hardware startup final 12 months in an interview with The New York Times. io Merchandise has raised an undisclosed quantity of funding from Laurene Powell Jobs’s Emerson Collective and others, in accordance with The Info.

The Info’s report notes that OpenAI could find yourself partnering with as an alternative of buying io Merchandise, which presently has a small workforce that features former Apple designers Tang Tan and Evans Hankey. io Merchandise has reportedly been engaged on totally different ideas of AI-enabled units, together with good residence devices. Final 12 months, The New York Instances mentioned that the startup’s aim was to construct merchandise that are “less socially disruptive than the iPhone.”