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, known as io Merchandise.
Ive, who left Apple in 2019 to begin his personal design agency known as LoveFrom, confirmed that he was working with Altman on the AI {hardware} startup final yr 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 response to The Data.
The Data’s report notes that OpenAI might find yourself partnering with as a substitute of buying io Merchandise, which at present 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 yr, The New York Instances mentioned that the startup’s aim was to construct merchandise that are “less socially disruptive than the iPhone.”