OpenAI is acquiring Jony Ive and Sam Altman's startup, io, which will lead creative and design work for OpenAI.

The all-stock deal with OpenAI values Ive’s AI hardware startup io at $6.5 billion—and is set to be a major windfall for the man who designed the iPhone.

Jony Ive's career was mainly at Apple, designing products like the iPhone and Mac. Now he'll work at OpenAI, which bought his AI device startup io.

Jony Ive, the famed designer who joined Steve Jobs to develop Apple’s most popular products, will now curate new devices for OpenAI after his startup was acquired by Sam Altman’s firm earlier this week,

OpenAI forms a new hardware division with the io team, led by Jony Ive, to develop AI-native devices, possibly launching a voice-first product as early as 2026.

Jony Ive, the veteran former Apple design chief credited with shaping the company’s product design, is joining ChatGPT maker OpenAI. OpenAI will merge with Ive’s tech company, io, according to a joint announcement from Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Ive announced a $6.4 billion deal that will merge his io hardware firm with OpenAI. Ive will head up the design for a new series of AI hardware products.

Here’s what we know: it’s probably not smart glasses. Beyond that, we don’t know much about what Jony Ive and OpenAI are building through their newly combined company io, except that it’s some kind of AI super-gadget. But after a couple of years of watching the industry try and shove AI into every form factor you can imagine, we have some guesses.

As OpenAI competes with tech giants such as Google, Meta and Apple, it's recruiting some of the most well-known figures in the tech industry.