In its largest acquisition to date, OpenAI has announced a $6.5 billion all-equity deal to acquire “io”, a hardware startup co-founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive. OpenAI will put in $5 billion in equity, with the deal pending regulatory approval and expected to close this summer.
Through this acquisition, OpenAI will inherit io’s full team, comprising around 55 professionals across hardware engineering, software development, product design, and manufacturing. Ive, widely recognized as a major force behind several of Apple’s products (including the iPhone and iMac), will take on extensive design and creative oversight across both OpenAI and io, according to an official statement, while his design firm, LoveFrom, will remain independent and will enter into a creative partnership with OpenAI.
“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,” OpenAI announced in the statement. “I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this moment. While I am both anxious and excited about the responsibility of the substantial work ahead, I am so grateful for the opportunity to be part of such an important collaboration. The values and vision of Sam and the teams at OpenAI and io are a rare inspiration,” Ive added.
Founded last year by Ive alongside former Apple colleagues Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tang Tan, io was established with the goal to explore how AGI could be physically expressed through consumer devices. The company’s internal focus was on creating entirely new hardware paradigms that go beyond screens and keyboards, exploring how humans might interact with AI in more intuitive ways. OpenAI had already acquired a minority stake in io in late 2024, purchasing 23% of the company through a combination of equity investment and partnership. That early involvement set the stage for a deeper collaboration, ultimately culminating in the full acquisition this year.
The acquisition of io seems to be in line with OpenAI’s broader objective to bring AI from the digital domain into the physical world. Until now, the company has primarily been recognized for its generative models, including ChatGPT and DALL·E, which operate within digital platforms and have a considerale user base. By integrating io’s expertise, OpenAI will be able to design and produce a new class of devices capable of harnessing and interacting with general-purpose AI models.
OpenAI has already made smaller moves in this direction. The company previously invested in Physical Intelligence, a robotics-focused startup, and brought on Caitlin Kalinowski, formerly of Meta’s AR division, to lead its hardware and robotics initiatives. However, the io acquisition is the most concerted effort to date in establishing OpenAI’s hardware identity. Ive, Hankey, and Tan have all played critical roles in the creation and evolution of Apple’s most successful hardware products, including the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. With that background, the team is now expected to develop a line of AI-native products under the OpenAI umbrella, with the first releases projected for 2026. The specifics of these devices remain undisclosed for now.
Content originally published on The Tech Media – Global technology news, latest gadget news and breaking tech news.
