Sam Altman's partnership with Jony Ive furthers OpenAI's hardware ambitions

OpenAI is entering hardware territory with its acquisition of former Apple design chief Jony Ive's stealthy artificial intelligence (AI) startup io in a $6.5 billion deal.

Altman is working with Ive, the famous designer behind Apple's iPhone and other products, to build devices that are made specifically for AI.

By doing this, Altman seems to be building a fully integrated AI company. That means his company will be involved in every part of how AI works, from developing models, to specialised AI chips and data centres, to hardware.


Taking shots

In the video announcement of the deal, Ive took a shot at Apple saying that the products we use today are "decades old" and it is common sense to build something beyond “legacy products".

Altman also referred to the iPhone and MacBook in the video, saying they are stellar but that a prototype AI-hardware product developed by io is the "coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen".

Rival watch

Altman is creating an all-in-one AI behemoth as OpenAI goes up against tech giants well-positioned to do the same. Google has succeeded in creating a vertically integrated AI company (with Pixel as the hardware). Microsoft and Amazon are working on the same as well.

However, Apple, despite integrating AI across its hardware products, appears to be lagging in the AI-specific hardware space, where its market dominance had positioned it to be a likely first mover. The iPhone maker had also struck a partnership with OpenAI to upgrade Siri, its voice assistant, which has faced setbacks recently.