OpenAI Buys Jony Ive’s AI Companion Company: Just Tech Bros Selling Old Rope?

In an unusual and surprising move, CEO Sam Altman has revealed that OpenAI is buying the company created by renowned designer Sir Jonathan Ive to create an “AI companion” — a physical device that lets people interact with AI. The all-equity deal values the start-up at a staggering $6.5 billion. OpenAI was already an investor, having a 23% stake according to the Wall Street Journal, but this is a significant move.

Mr Altman isn’t short of ambition for this new product category: he stated that OpenAI plans to ship 100 million AI “companions”, with the first device being released in late 2026.

Few details are known, but it’s believed the device is positioned as the third key device in consumers’ lives beyond their smartphone and PC and will be fully aware of a user’s daily behaviours and surroundings.

The product, which reportedly has no screen, takes a very different approach from others, notably those offered by Meta, whose CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is betting on glasses as the best device for delivering AI. In a recent interview, he stated that glasses allow an AI assistant to “see what you see and hear what you hear, and talk in your ear throughout the day”. He said it’s “hard to imagine a better form factor for something that you want to be a personal AI that kind of has all the context about your life”. Mr Zuckerberg is so confident about glasses as the next breakthrough device format that he thinks it’s “unimaginable” that in 10 years, every pair of glasses won’t have some form of AI support.

The Jony Ive–OpenAI companion device is quite different, as it has no screen and is probably not a piece of wearable tech, as reports state that Sir Jony wasn’t keen to build a product that the user wears. Instead, we expect users will carry the device in their pocket or place it next to them on a desk.

Unsurprisingly, there’s scepticism about this type of product, particularly in the context of the high-profile failure of the Humane AI pin. The pin captured the imagination of tech enthusiasts, including me, but turned out to be a classic example of overpromising and underdelivering. With that in mind, scepticism about two leading “tech bros” teaming up in the area is to be expected.

However, it would be foolish to bet against Sir Jony, given his remarkable track record of designing products that disrupt a market. Furthermore, the business model that Mr Altman has outlined for the device, where subscribers to ChatGPT would “just get mailed a new computer”, is intriguing and plays strongly to the trend of a connected device as a service.

And there’s no question that OpenAI would love to have a direct relationship with its customers rather than delivering services to devices made or powered by Apple, Google, Microsoft and others. To compete effectively with these device-makers in the long term, OpenAI needs to augment its strength in large language models with user and contextual data — an area where the large platform companies have a huge head start.

From the few details available, it’s hard to draw meaningful conclusions. Still, we’ll be watching the partnership closely amid the rapidly changing landscape for connected devices as they become increasingly infused with AI capabilities.

For more context on the partnership, watch the YouTube video below: