OpenAI buys iPhone designer Jony Ive’s start-up, teases ‘coolest piece of technology’

The ChatGPT maker wants its own hardware platform to avoid selling software through Apple iOS or Google’s Android, analysts say

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Published: 11:00am, 22 May 2025

OpenAI is buying Jony Ive’s start-up io Products in a US$6.5 billion deal and will bring the chief designer of early iPhones on board as creative head to develop devices tailored for the generative artificial intelligence (AI) era.

LoveFrom, the design firm founded by Ive after leaving Apple, has been working with OpenAI for two years on generative AI devices – an area where start-ups have stumbled because of high computing demands, including flops such as Humane’s AI Pin.

With Ive leading design, OpenAI aims to pair the technology behind its popular ChatGPT chatbot with the product design expertise that made devices such as the iPhone bestsellers.

The companies did not disclose the financial details of the deal for io, which Ive co-founded a year ago. The all-stock deal was valued at US$6.5 billion based on OpenAI’s US$300 billion valuation, according to a source familiar with the matter.

OpenAI had previously owned a 23 per cent stake in the company, according to the source who requested anonymity to discuss private matters.

Jony Ive, the industrial designer famous for the Apple products he helped devise, including the iPhone and iPad. Photo: AP

“The products that we’re using to deliver and connect us to unimaginable technology. They’re decades old, yeah, and so it’s just common sense to at least think surely there’s something beyond these legacy products we have,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Ive said in a video posted on OpenAI’s blog.