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 gadgets market. OpenAI acquired a 23% stake in io final yr and invested within the startup at the moment.
The acquisition is the most important in OpenAI’s historical past and was introduced on Wednesday, mere weeks after OpenAI agreed to purchase AI-assisted coding device Windsurf for about $3 billion. The deal is meant to spark a brand new era of merchandise for a future the place AI expertise attains or surpasses human intelligence.
As a part of the acquisition, Ive and his workforce of about 55 engineers, designers, and researchers will be a part of OpenAI in inventive and design roles that enable them to form AI gadgets for shoppers. They are going to 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 venture to maneuver folks past screens and into different varieties of AI-powered gadgets. The Wall Road Journal stories that the 2 have been contemplating AI headphones and different devices with cameras.
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In a launch 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 believe now we have the chance right here to fully reimagine what it means to make use of a pc,” Altman stated within the video.
Whereas each have been quiet in regards to the particulars of a household of recent AI merchandise, they teased that the merchandise have 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 expertise the world has ever seen.”
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Ive began working at Apple in 1992 and performed a vital function 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 offers with Airbnb and Ferrari.
Altman has explored AI gadgets earlier than. In 2020, he invested within the startup Humane, which developed an Ai Pin that fell flat with shoppers as a consequence of overheating points and a lagging interface.
OpenAI reported final month that ChatGPT had 500 million world weekly customers.
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 gadgets market. OpenAI acquired a 23% stake in io final yr and invested within the startup at the moment.
The acquisition is the most important in OpenAI’s historical past and was introduced on Wednesday, mere weeks after OpenAI agreed to purchase AI-assisted coding device Windsurf for about $3 billion. The deal is meant to spark a brand new era of merchandise for a future the place AI expertise attains or surpasses human intelligence.
As a part of the acquisition, Ive and his workforce of about 55 engineers, designers, and researchers will be a part of OpenAI in inventive and design roles that enable them to form AI gadgets for shoppers. They are going to 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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