Legendary Apple designer Jony Ive has been a busy man since he left the constructing in 2019 to pursue different adventures. After teaming up with fellow designer and shut good friend Marc Newson to kind his personal design studio, LoveFrom, he expanded to supply his design prowess to many different high-end manufacturers reminiscent of Ferrari.
Nonetheless, it seems Ive secretly had at the least one different iron within the hearth. In 2024, he expanded past core design consulting when he quietly co-founded an AI startup with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tang Tan. Notably, Hankey was one in all Ive’s successors at Apple till she left the corporate in 2023 in an exodus of its prime designers. Tang Tan led iPhone and Apple Watch product design till 2024, whereas Cannon had left Apple years earlier to create the Mailbox app, which was ultimately acquired by Dropbox.
Ive’s AI initiative was a well-kept secret till this week when OpenAI introduced that “Sam & Jony” have been getting collectively to introduce io, the place “Sam” is OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The corporate’s publish revealed that the 2 groups have been quietly collaborating for about two years, and now they’re getting ready to meld Ive’s design experience with OpenAI’s synthetic intelligence applied sciences to provide, properly, one thing.
What that “one thing” is stays a thriller, as the corporate is being fairly mysterious about it. Bloomberg acquired into the nitty-gritty of the deal, which is technically an acquisition of Ive’s AI gadget startup “in a virtually $6.5 billion all-stock deal.”
“I’ve a rising sense that every part I’ve discovered over the past 30 years has led me to this place and to this second,” Ive informed Bloomberg in a joint interview with Sam Altman. “It’s a relationship and a method of working collectively that I feel goes to yield merchandise and merchandise and merchandise.”
Whereas Ive has additionally dabbled in software program design — he will get the credit score (or blame, relying in your perspective) for the “flat” look we acquired in iOS 7, which has impressed fashionable iPhone and iPad software program design ever since. That’s anticipated to vary when iOS 19 seems subsequent month, however it can nonetheless imply the Ive-inspired design has graced iPhone screens for over a decade.
Nonetheless, Ive’s most important contributions to Apple have been on the {hardware} facet, from the unique iPod and iPhone to the fashionable MacBook and Apple Watch designs. To be truthful, not all of Ive’s concepts have been dwelling runs. Some have been method forward of the expertise, such because the pitch for a steering wheel-less Apple Automobile in 2014, and a few simply put kind method too far forward of operate, reminiscent of Ive’s want for thinness that led to the butterfly keyboard fiasco. Ive additionally reportedly wished to cut back Apple’s MacBook lineup to at least one laptop computer that will do every part.
Jony Ive labored alongside Steve Jobs for years and was counted among the many late CEO and co-founder’s closest confidants. Nonetheless, many insiders have stated that it was this dynamic duo that led to Apple’s extraordinary designs, as Ive’s visionary whimsy wanted to be combined with Jobs’ extra sensible views. “Steve Jobs was his editor,” as veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg stated in a 2024 interview, “Jobs would pull him away from his crazier instincts.”
On this new OpenAI partnership, Ive could have discovered his new “Steve” within the type of Sam Altman. Jobs as soon as described Ive as his “non secular associate,” and Altman hopes that he and Ive can have the same relationship.
OpenAI goes to create a product at a stage of high quality that “has by no means occurred earlier than in shopper {hardware},” Altman stated. “AI is such an enormous leap ahead by way of what folks can try this it wants a brand new type of computing kind issue to get the utmost potential out of it,” he stated.
Mark Gurman and Shirin Ghaffary, Bloomberg
For OpenAI, an organization that’s been centered completely on software program — and primarily on the again finish — the acquisition will give them entry to a group of {hardware} engineers and manufacturing consultants to design and construct what’s anticipated to turn out to be a household of gadgets, the primary of which might debut as quickly as subsequent 12 months.
No matter they’re engaged on, will probably be one thing greater than the ill-fated Humane pin or Rabbit R1 private assistant. “These have been very poor merchandise,” Ive stated within the Bloomberg interview. “There was an absence of latest methods of pondering expressed in merchandise.”
Nonetheless, no matter it’s, it gained’t be a competitor to the iPhone. What Ive and Altman envision is a brand new method for folks to attach with AI that will likely be to the smartphone what that cellular gadget was to the laptop computer. “In the identical method that the smartphone didn’t make the laptop computer go away, I don’t suppose our very first thing goes to make the smartphone go away,” Altman informed Bloomberg. “It’s a completely new type of factor.”
That means one thing past any of the shape elements we’ve but seen, which has positively gotten our curiosity piqued. Altman has particularly stated it’s not a pair of good glasses, and it could be underwhelming to see them do one thing like a pin, smartwatch, smartphone, or headphones. Whereas most of these aren’t revolutionary AI merchandise, the shape elements have been accomplished to dying, and it’s onerous to think about a person with Ive’s design imaginative and prescient doing one thing so pedestrian.
In accordance with The Wall Avenue Journal, no matter they take into account will likely be a “third core gadget” that may act as a companion to a MacBook and an iPhone.
The product will likely be able to being totally conscious of a consumer’s environment and life, will likely be unobtrusive, in a position to relaxation in a single’s pocket or on one’s desk, and will likely be a 3rd core gadget an individual would placed on a desk after a MacBook Professional and an iPhone.
Berber Jin, The Pockets Avenue Journal
Whereas we don’t know precisely what the gadget will likely be, Altman and Ive have given sufficient clues to inform us what it gained’t be. They wish to “assist wean customers from screens,” and Ive has “been skeptical about constructing one thing to put on on the physique.” That guidelines out the commonest concepts, and whenever you put all of it collectively, they’re setting a fairly excessive bar for one thing that will likely be revolutionary. Nonetheless, don’t anticipate to listen to far more till it’s prepared for launch, as they plan to cloak it in an Apple-grade stage of safety to forestall rivals from copying the product earlier than it’s prepared.
Nonetheless, the duo is extremely bold that this will likely be a “must-have” product. “We’re not going to ship 100 million gadgets actually on day one,” Altman stated, however he believes they may do it “quicker than any firm has ever shipped 100 million of one thing new earlier than.”