Jony Ive has confirmed that he’s working with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on an AI hardware project. The confirmation came today as part of a profile of Ive in The New York Times, nearly a year after the possibility of a collaboration between Altman and the longtime Apple designer was first reported on.
There aren’t a lot of details on the project. Ive reportedly met Altman through Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, and the venture is being funded by Ive and the Emerson Collective, Laurene Powell Jobs’ company. The Times reports it could raise $1 billion in funding by the end of the year, but makes no mention of Masayoshi Son, the SoftBank CEO rumored last year to have invested $1 billion in the project.
The project only has 10 employees currently, but they include Tang Tan and Evans Hankey, two key people who worked with Ive on the iPhone. LoveFrom, Ive’s company, is leading the device’s design, according to the report. The team is reportedly now working out of a 32,000-square-foot office building in San Francisco, part of a $90 million strip of real estate that Ive has bought up on single city block.
As for the device itself? The Times says that Ive and Altman discussed “how generative AI made it possible to create a new computing device because the technology could do more for users than traditional software” due to its ability to handle complicated requests. Last year it was rumored to be inspired by touchscreen technology and the original iPhone.
But it sounds like few specifics are nailed down. LoveFrom cofounder Marc Newson told the Times that the AI product — and when it’ll come to market — are still being figured out.
