Apple’s former chief designer Sir Jony Ive, who for years was the right hand man of the late Steve Jobs, has officially joined forces with OpenAI and its chief executive Sam Altman.

Both parties announced that Sir Jony’s io venture he co-founded in 2024, is to “merge” with OpenAI, and 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.”

This move has been expected, as Sir Jony has been rumoured to be collaborating with Sam Altman on an AI hardware start-up for a couple of years now.

io venture

The project was first reported September 2023, when the Financial Times reported that Sir Jony was in “serious” discussions with OpenAI to build the “iPhone of artificial intelligence,” aided by over $1 billion in funding from Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son.

Then in September 2024 Sir Jony confirmed the development in a New York Times profile about his activities since leaving Apple six years ago.

He said at the time that the goal (of io) is to produce “a product that uses AI to create a computing experience that is less socially disruptive than the iPhone”.

Since his departure from Apple, Sir Jony and his design house LoveFrom have been involved in a number of hardware projects – including a special edition record turntable from a British home audio technology supplier called Linn.

Joining OpenAI

Now the iconic British designer is officially joining OpenAI, where he will develop some type of hardware product for the AI pioneer.

“As io merges with OpenAI, Jony and LoveFrom will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io,” said the two parties. “We could not possibly be more excited.”

“I think we have the opportunity here to kind of completely re-imagine what it means to use a computer,” Sam Altman said in an accompanying video.

Sir Jony also said in the video he believed the world was on the “brink of a new generation of technology.”

Sam Altman said in the video that Sir Jony had already given him a prototype of the device to take home, and it is “the coolest piece of tech the world has ever seen.”

The two men also talked out how they both clicked together and enjoyed a “shared vision.”

US media outlets have reported that OpenAI had a 23 percent stake in the io startup prior to Wednesday’s announcement.

US media also reported the merger has valued io at approximately $6.4bn (£4.7bn).

Sir Jony’s LoveFrom design house will remain independent.