Jony Ive re-entered the computer industry through a $6.4 billion merger between his new hardware company, io Products, Inc., and OpenAI. Ive will guide OpenAI on hardware design, joined by some of his ex-Apple colleagues. The move highlights the belief that advanced AI assistants could disrupt the gadget market, potentially overshadowing Apple’s current MacBooks and iPhones.
Before Jony Ive left Apple in 2019, no major Apple hardware launch was complete without a video highlighting the product’s physical design, narrated by Ive’s gentle British accent.
He became a touchstone in Silicon Valley for great hardware because of his role in the creation of the iPhone and Apple Watch.
On Wednesday, Ive returned to the computer industry with a new video, but it wasn’t launching a new Apple product. Instead, Ive announced a $6.4 billion deal that will merge his nascent hardware firm, called io, with OpenAI. Ive will head up the design for a new series of AI hardware products.
“Tech shifts like the internet, the smartphone, and AI only happen once in a generation,” longtime Apple analyst Gene Munster posted on X on Wednesday. “OpenAI is catalyzing this shift into something tangible.”
Wow. Jony is now part of OpenAI.
Big Picture:
• Tech shifts like the internet, the smartphone, and AI only happen once in a generation. OpenAI is catalyzing this shift into something tangible.
• Before AI, there was no real threat to Apple’s or Google’s business. The emergence…— Gene Munster (@munster_gene) May 21, 2025
Even Apple executives have said that AI hardware could threaten its iPhone business.
Eddy Cue, Apple’s chief of services, said in court earlier this month that he believes AI devices could replace the iPhone within 10 years, “crazy as that sounds,” he said.
“AI is a new technology shift, and it’s creating new opportunities for new entrants,” Cue said.
Meanwhile, Apple’s big improvement to its built-in assistant, Siri, was delayed earlier this year.
One of the core features of Apple Intelligence, the company’s suite of AI features, was the integration with OpenAI for ChatGPT to handle the queries that Apple Intelligence couldn’t…
Wednesday’s announcement should serve as a wake-up call to Apple now that its former guru is working with the fastest-growing company in Silicon Valley to build products that could eventually threaten its position at the top of the hardware industry.
As Ive put it in the launch video: “I am absolutely certain that we are literally on the brink of a new generation of technology that can make us our better selves.”
OpenAI is getting an injection of full-time talent with Apple backgrounds.
Scott Cannon, Tang Tan and Evans Hankey, all Apple design veterans, and co-founders of io, are joining OpenAI.
MacDailyNews Take: Thanks primarily to Steve Jobs’ iPhone, Apple still has time, but the currently stultified company desperately needs new blood at the highest levels. The period of milking iterative products should’ve ended several years ago, yet Apple remains mired in it today, stagnated; handicapped from the top down.
Do I believe that Tim Cook is the absolute best person to be CEO of Apple?
No, I do not.
Someone more focused on the actual business at hand (delighting customers) and who has the ability to sell it onstage would be more successful. Likely wildly more successful. In the Apple CEOship as defined by Steve Jobs, Tim Cook is out of his element. He cannot keep products updated. He cannot innovate fast or far enough. He cannot even manage to have adequate supplies on hand at launches, repeatedly. Sometimes, he can’t even and won’t ever ship what he’s promised. To ice his half-baked, lopsided cake, his stultifying keynotes make waiting in line at the DMV seem exciting. Several of his VPs routinely do a far better job onstage than he. – SteveJack, MacDailyNews, April 2, 2019
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