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OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive
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- minimaxir 1y agoFrom April: https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/07/openai-reportedly-mulls-buying-jony-ive-and-sam-altmans-ai-hardware-startup/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/07/openai-reportedly-mulls-bu... > OpenAI is said to have discussed acquiring the AI hardware startup that former Apple design lead Jony Ive is building with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. According to The Information, OpenAI could pay around $500 million for the fledgling company, called io Products. How the heck did the price go up 13x?
- AdamN 1y agoThere's only one Jony Ive and alot of demand from the company with the deepest pockets in town ... UX will make or break any major new AI product - especially hardware. The price is steep but I think it's actually a sensible move. There really aren't that many other people with the proven ability to deliver when it comes to UX at scale for novel areas.
- babypuncher 1y agoThe first step in AI delivering a good UX might be coming up with a logo that doesn't look like a butthole. Unfortunately this seems to be an impossible task.
- teruakohatu 1y agoJony Ive is a designer verses Tony Fadell who is a hardware guy. Ive is a very talented artist but AI is not being held back by people unwilling to courageously make things thinner and thinner. I would imagine Ive looked at an Apple HomePod and thought “we could make this beautifully flat and hang it on the wall of every room in the house”. This might be a good idea but it in no way solves the major problems with AI/LLMs.
- fooker 1y agoThe same guy who designed the 2016 generation MacBooks and was kicked out of Apple over it? Jony Ive is great at UX when someone like Steve Jobs is there to veto stupid ideas.
- bbor 1y agoOnly in silicon valley would $6,500,000,000 for a single designer seem like a sensible move...
- philosophty 1y agoIt's not actually $6.5 billion cash. It's a stock certificate. A stock certificate which can go to zero.
- ignoramous 1y ago> A stock certificate which can go to zero. For whoever is holding the bag at the end of it all.
- whatshisface 1y agoBecause it sounds like the CEO of OpenAI wants to use investor's money to buy his other company. Too bad we can't short it or otherwise stop it, because investment for the things we could start will dry up once the world figures this out. We're all correlated to companies like FTX whether we like them or not...
- jazzyjackson 1y agoThere should be a way to reverse valuate a company based on how much of its stock it used to acquire a company worth (500,000,000 dollars of) peanuts
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- bravoetch 1y agoDepending on who is doing the valuation, I'm sure this is already a consideration. Like when Coinbase acquired Earn for $110m-ish. Was Earn worth that? Absolutely not. Since Coinbase and Earn shared investors, it was merely a convenient way for those investors to pay themselves out of the unexpected billion dollar cash pile Coinbase amassed in 2017.
- cma 1y agoIsn't that a less efficient way than a $110m dividend or buyback?
- manquer 1y agoDividend means taxes . Buyback requires someone to sell (I.e. exit) usually no one wants[1] to especially when the company is going hot. investors would rather have (more)stock in a hot company than cash. Fund managers and staff have also disincentives for early exits, i.e. they have to find and invest in another company and cannot just keep the money, which means more work. They rather exit by switching stock to a hotter in demand, hard to get in companies if they can. [1] there are always some employees and founders who would prefer some liquidity , but either they don’t hold large enough positions (employees) or investors don’t want to give a lot of liquidity (founders) For public companies it is different- buybacks work because there is always someone ready to sell. Usually retail but also short term funds who don’t care about liquidating. ETFs and other very institutional investors or those into buffet style long term investments will not sell easily
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- smokel 1y agoPerhaps this is a way to channel money into someone's pocket, instead of keeping it in a non-profit?
- outside1234 1y agoThey don't call him Scam Altman for no reason.
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- jrflowers 1y ago> How the heck did the price go up 13x? Because they’re not paying with money. It’s $6.5B of pure equity in a private company that they’ve decided to value at $300B based off of… vibes or hopes or whatever?
- bdangubic 1y agohey if Tesla is worth $1T OpenAI might be 10x undervalued at $300B :)
- mrandish 1y agoThis announcement furthers my sense OpenAI is becoming a hype vehicle destined to be the iconic poster child of early AI hubris when the bubble pops. When I read the pretentious marketing copy and photo on the announcement page my first thought was "Someday this'll be linked on the Wikipedia page for 'The AI Bubble'". I'm not even a hardcore AI skeptic, I think AI can be useful and valuable in the near-term (even outside coding!) and potentially transformative in the long-term but I also think current capabilities are over-hyped and wildly overvalued. I think AI is going through the typical hype cycle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle) and we're currently late in the "Inflated Expectations" phase soon to be followed by the inevitable "Trough of Disillusionment".
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- rdli 1y agoSeems that OpenAI is acquiring Io for $6.4B in an all-equity deal.
- _sword 1y agoThe self dealing king Sam Altman strikes again
- kumarm 1y agoHe is second only to Elon in this case (SolarCity, X/XAI).
- _sword 1y agoThat's why they so despise each-other; they're the same
- misiti3780 1y agoNo - Elon is much more successful
- esafak 1y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgyU0LyWZ9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgyU0LyWZ9M
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- nickthegreek 1y agohttps://archive.is/HgpSJ https://archive.is/HgpSJ
- nickrubin 1y agoOpenAI announcement: https://openai.com/sam-and-jony/ https://openai.com/sam-and-jony/
- bambax 1y ago"Sam and Jony"??!? Sam and Jony sounds like John and Yoko. Nothing good ever came out of that pair.
- outside1234 1y agoThe picture alone is enough to make you vomit
- CamelCaseName 1y agoYeah, that is a really weird photo. Trying hard to replicate the iconic Steve Jobs photo I guess.
- iamtedd 1y agoThat and that every paragraph of text on the page is centre-aligned. What is this, Geocities?
- Maxious 1y agoThere's a video at the bottom "two friends"
- SimianSci 1y agoDeffinately a contender for one of the creepiest photos in the industry. Not something that inspires confidence in the "Design Prowess" of the acquisition if this is what they felt best represented them.
- eagerpace 1y agoIs this an m&a press release or an engagement announcement
- minimaxir 1y ago
- ko_pivot 1y agoNo question that Ive is a legend, but I do think the fall of Humane (also ex-Apple) and the challenges at Meta, Apple, and Google in terms of VR/AR adoption (Meta Ray Ban, Apple Vision, Google Glasses and the new thing) are instructive here. The $6.5B almost feels like the largest ever aquihire.
- Handy-Man 1y agoBut Meta is thriving with Meta Ray Bans, they have sold over 2M as of few months back. (Yes I know that number seems small compared to other devices, but for a new form factor, that seems like a great early success)
- croes 1y agoWhere is they AR/VR part in the Ray Bans? It’s cameras, speakers, microphones but no display.
- codybontecou 1y agoI’m pretty sure the latest models have AR. I saw a presentation within the last year showcasing AR emoji-like things. Not that emojis are a killer feature, but the tech is there.
- jazzyjackson 1y agoThe glasses with a HUD are a different product line, latest ray bans are just camera mic and audio, but I still count them as AR because the AI voice in your ear can see what you see. I tried them for a few months and returned them, not a good enough camera to enjoy the hands free snapshots I was looking forward to, and just didn’t have a use for a q&a bot attached to my ear. For what they are I’ll give them props for a nicely designed product, the charging case is clever and works well. I liked them for music with the Apple Watch, pretty slick combination. Maybe if I could stomach giving a llama bot access to email and calendar etc etc to have a real personal assistant it would be an attractive offering in a world that accepts being watched 24/7 by AI/billionaire overlords
- duxup 1y agoIs there actually a thing or product here they're talking about / they made / making?
- ncr100 1y agoNope. It's stealth-mode. So one must infer based upon employees, monies, and other non-marketing intel.
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- samtp 1y agoI'm also struggling to find the website for Ive's company that is being acquired for $6.5 billion. Maybe I'm just slow today, but does the company being acquired have a website?
- ryanwhitney 1y agoThey only have a landing page: https://www.lovefrom.com/ https://www.lovefrom.com/
- tjuene 1y agonot lovefrom, the "io" company thats being acquired
- elicash 1y agoYes, in the video on OpenAI's website, they reference a product that Altman is testing at home created by Ive. No, we can't see it yet. And there's not much description, either. Just that it's the "coolest technology that the world will have ever seen." Altman: "We have like magic intelligence in the cloud. If I wanted to ask ChatGPT something right now, about something we had talked about earlier, think about what would happen. I would like reach down, I would get on my laptop, I'd open it up, I'd launch a web browser, I'd start typing, and I'd have to like explain that thing, and I would hit enter, and I would wait and I would get a response. And that it as the current limit of what a current laptop can do." The above is very r/wheredidthesoda go but it hints at the product being ambient computing related.
- 0xB31B1B 1y agointeresting back door way to get sam altman some equity in openAI. I wonder how much of this is downstream from them not being able to convert to a for profit and giving sam a slug of equity
- woah 1y agoHow does that work?
- 0xB31B1B 1y agoThe company oAI is acquiring is owned by Sam Altman and Johnny Iive
- brcmthrowaway 1y agoIs that legal? How is Sam Altman doing so much self dealing while being an OpenAI exec?
- leptons 1y agoThat has to be some kind of corporate money laundering, or highly illegal. The board should fire Altman if this is true and get out of this purchase.
- jackdh 1y agoYes that worked so well the last time ha.
- rvz 1y agoThe name is "IO". A day after the Google I/O keynote. Another purposely planned derailment. It's probably some form of glasses with ChatGPT on it but obvious glazing, pomp and ceremony of this announcement talking directly to Apple. Apple has 1 year to respond.
- joshstrange 1y agoApple is failing horrible at “AI” currently but I don’t see what the big deal with Jony Ive is in 2025. He had a massive (if not single-handed) impact on some of the _worst_ hardware Apple has ever shipped, thinner, thinner, thinner to the product’s detriment and butterfly keyboards. I lay that all at Ive’s feet.
- milkshakes 1y agoyou must really have an axe to grind, you've commented three times on the same article with how much you hate ive. you're right his later work was a little frustrating, but he's also the same guy who brought you the ipod, the iphone, the ipad, the apple watch, and airpods. maybe he's not batting 1000 but the level of vitriol here is striking.
- joshstrange 1y agoI never said I hate him, I think his is massively over-hyped, and I just think it's insanity that people think that since he had success earlier in his life that everything he touches is gold. It's a common theme of people thinking any successful business person must be worth listening to in other aspects of life (see: people treating billionaires like they are genius'), a stupid theme but a common one.
- milkshakes 1y agohow else would you evaluate a designer if not by their track record? ive has a proven track record of conceptualizing and delivering category defining products. isn't that exactly the skill set that would be called for in this case? if not, what criteria would you apply?
- Onavo 1y agoHow would high net worth people like Jony Ive pay tax on this sort of big windfalls? Especially if it's all stock.
- joshstrange 1y agoThe ability for a CEO to be a founder of another company and then buy that company with the company he is a CEO of seems incredibly sketchy. See also: bullshit idea that someone can actually run multiple companies, it’s ceo welfare and vanity titles.
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- CGMthrowaway 1y agoNo one is forcing you to invest in said companies. As an investor it's up to you to do due diligence on the board, conflict of interest disclosures, whether sizeable acquisitions require shareholder approval, etc. This is on top of blanket legal protections that already exist in case you didn't want to do your own DD, like duty of loyalty, care and fiduciary; SEC disclosures, AD @ the DoJ, FTC, etc.
- joshstrange 1y agoNot sure what you are replying to. I'm not investing in OpenAI nor do I want to. I can call out BS behavior without being an investor.
- CGMthrowaway 1y agoAlthough “you” is often used to refer to a specific person or persons (e.g., “How did you get to work today?”), in many languages, it can also be used to refer to people in general (e.g., “You avoid rush hour if you can.”). https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2010939117#:~:text=Although%20%E2%80%9Cyou%E2%80%9D%20is%20often%20used,if%20you%20can.%E2%80%9D). https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2010939117#:~:text=Alt...
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- jack_riminton 1y agoPeople seem to be overlooking this: “ Altman doesn’t have equity in io, OpenAI said. “
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoWhat about equity-like-instruments-that-don’t-have-the-word-equity-in-the-name?
- outside1234 1y agoOr stakes in other companies that company then buys
- maerF0x0 1y agoor highly correlated assets which move in near tandem creating meaning a boost on one is a boost on the other.
- karaterobot 1y agoSometimes two collaborators make each other better than either are alone. I get the sense that's how Steve Jobs and Jony Ive were. I've not seen anything Ive has done since be as good as what he did before. Someone has to hold the spike so the other one can swing the hammer. My guess is that's not how this relationship with Altman will work. And that picture is terrifying, please take it down and destroy the camera that took it.
- kranke155 1y agoEverything about this announcement screams “we’re completely out of touch” I am terrified of this company making any products
- rchaud 1y agoLet 'em make overpriced tchotchkes with private capital all they want. I'm more worried about them winning inflated government contracts and tax credits paid for with public dollars.
- easton 1y agoWhat is it about that picture that's so icky? I had the exact same reaction.
- rchaud 1y agoIt's a Hall and Oates album cover featuring two idea guys hellbent on putting artists out of work.
- mikepurvis 1y agoIt's a weirdly intimate pose, and it looks like it was taken from way too close— almost at arms-length, like a selfie, rather than from 8-10 feet back with a normal 80mm portrait lens. Altman especially looks kind of fish-bowled, being the one in front.
- piskov 1y agoRussians have the famous meme for that [1] (just see the photo) Literal translation is “my snot-nosed kid / my little shit” https://neolurk.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%BE%D0%B9_%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B7%D0%B4%D1%8E%D0%BA https://neolurk.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%BE%D0%B9_%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%...
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- nickrubin 1y agoThat is absolutely not their website
- hu3 1y agoThanks. Could you share the link? I'm having trouble finding their website.
- jsheard 1y agoI don't think they got as far as making a website before being acquired. AFAICT the name of the company hadn't even been announced prior to this, it was just vaguely referred to as Jony Ive's hardware company.
- hu3 1y agoThank you for providing context. "About 55 hardware engineers, software developers, and manufacturing experts will join OpenAI as part of the acquisition". (for $6.5B) So I think WhatsApp still holds the record for engineer/$B acquisition: "WhatsApp had 32 engineers when it was bought for 19 billion dollars." Even more if you correct for inflation.
- Nerd_Nest 1y agoAh, that clears things up. No wonder the website is hard to find if they hadn’t officially announced the company yet.
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- seatac76 1y agoThat is an insane amount to hire Johnny Ive. Just to signal to the market that OpenAI is getting into hardware, what on earth could they be building towards. They’ve been writing some big checks off late, these costs will have to be justified soon enough.
- jodydonetti 1y agoAcqui-hire startup -> Jony onboard -> new device with OpenAI exclusive features -> Windows Phone is back. /s (kinda)
- i_love_cookies 1y ago[dead]
- ljm 1y agoVCs have too much capital at hand and don't know how to deploy it all. This is on the back of epic wealth inequality. I don't know why Jony Ive is seen to be worth billions, but he's obviously not, he's just another shill in the ivory tower.
- joshstrange 1y ago> I don't know why Jony Ive is seen to be worth billions, but he's obviously not. Agreed. If it was the only option it would have been worth it to Apple to pay him billions to _leave_. His last 5-10 years at Apple were marked by him ruining a number of products.
- mountainriver 1y agoVCs don’t have a ton of capital on hand right now, interest rates are high, investments are way down
- SimianSci 1y agoBroadly, you're right, but again, there is an incredible amount of inequality at the moment, so while 90% of VCs might be strapped for cash, ther other 10% have so much that they are struggling to find worthy investment vehicles that can grow their money-pile. Its a dillema they are in because nothing can justify the volume of investment enough without a sufficiant potential for growth, so any venture that even hints at big enough return, will find itself flush with cash it wont realistically know what to do with.
- neom 1y agoI had been considering doing a startup in this space, I thought Humane and rabbit are directionally correct. This kinda makes me want to do it even more, that would be a fun team to compete against.
- kranke155 1y agoYou’d win
- neom 1y agoThat was both a very very kind and very very mean thing to say. :)
- IshKebab 1y agoThe manor criticism of them is that they are just phone apps pointlessly shoved into an extra piece of hardware. What about them do you think was directionally correct? I.e. why not just use your phone?
- neom 1y ago"phone" is over - I would just make better devices, there would be a communications device, you could call it a phone or whatever. (Frankly: I just genuinely believe I could do a really good job here is all, I have no real reason to believe that except pure ego, I'm fine admitting that)
- jazzyjackson 1y agoI moved back to a flip phone (sonim xp3+) and love it as a piece of hardware. Built like a stone I could skip. Hold down a number for speed dial. Flip it closed to hang up. I just want a competent personal assistant on speed dial I can talk to in private.
- samtp 1y agoSaying the phone is over because of AI is like saying websites are over because of AI. Frankly, complete nonsense.
- monkeydust 1y agoThe most expensive aquihire in history
- Invictus0 1y agoThis is what happens when you let a VC pretend to be a visionary
- philosophty 1y agoThis is a sign of OpenAI's weakness. Altman is desperately trying to use OpenAI's inflated valuation to buy some kind of advantage. Which is why he's buying ads, paying $6.5 billion in stock to Jony Ive, and $3 billion for a VSCode fork created in a few months. Almost anything makes sense when you see your valuation going to zero unless you can figure something out.
- adamrezich 1y agoAGI any day now, though! Any day now.
- yeahwhatever10 1y agoAgreed. This doesn't look like 4D chess, this stinks of desperation.
- moralestapia 1y agoOf note, and to support your argument, all of these deals are stock only.
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- poormathskills 1y agoOpenAI does literally anything “This is a sign of OpenAI’s weakness” I think this is the third time I’ve seen this exact comment at the top of a HN post about an OpenAI announcement.There is a weird amount of emotional investment in not wanting OpenAI to win. Personally, I am just excited to see what the device looks like. The prototype must be good to justify this valuation.
- slipnslider 1y agoI think a lot of people on here have heard enough stories about how Sam Altman behaves when the cameras aren't looking and dislike him and thus his company. Also its normal backlash - when something gets so popular so fast, you are going to naturally have some haters. Lastly actions speak louder than words. OpenAI used to talk about AGI and Super AI and nuclear launch codes and national security. Now they are buying VS Code forks and ad companies. The AI race is more than heating up and Sama knows it and he's throwing some hail mary's in hopes to keep OpenAI near or at the top.
- _ncuy 1y agoI find it amusing that IO a company with no product and no history is valued and bought at $6.5B.
- apples_oranges 1y agoSounds to me like money is being distributed to that startup‘s investors?
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- slipnslider 1y agoThe dotcom bubble gave insane valuations to "companies" that literally had a static html page and no product or service.
- NetOpWibby 1y agoThat is WILD to think about because I regularly create one-pager websites for my own projects...kinda bewildering to comprehend valuations for something so basic.
- barbazoo 1y agoMaybe that's a reason to stop doing it.
- dexterdog 1y agoThose insane valuations were not 1% of this.
- doctorpangloss 1y agoWhat do you mean? The idea is obvious, it's an Apple Homepod sized orb-screen, like a mini Vegas projector, running OpenAI's realtime API.
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- xnx 1y agoI hope Windsurf and Jony got some real money along with their OpenAI stock.
- createaccount99 1y agoI thought all acquisitions were done on leverage these days, is stock actually switching hands and not just magic money?
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- blixt 1y agoI actually thought the video they posted[1] would have information, but that was just 9 minutes of two guys congratulating each other. [1] https://twitter.com/OpenAI/status/1925235156157440438 https://twitter.com/OpenAI/status/1925235156157440438
- SimianSci 1y agoSounds like the same level of substance IO had before it was purchased. Aside from the news is there anything more to this acquisition than two people effectivly repeating "look at us" on loop?
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- polynomial 1y agoThis right here. How is this being treated as news, not back slapping?
- whynotminot 1y agoThese product-focused moves feel like a tacit admission that AGI is further away than they’ve been preaching. If it was close at hand, spending precious resources on anything other than pursuing AGI wouldn’t make sense.
- justanotheratom 1y agoRE: product-focused moves These are tentacles that AGI will need.
- yahoozoo 1y agoYeah, AGI needs a VS Code fork.
- mountainriver 1y agoOr just a realization that they are mainly up against google with a massive money factory. They need their own money factories or they won’t survive long term
- lolinder 1y agoAGI is the ultimate money factory if they could deliver it on the timelines that they were projecting until recently.
- mountainriver 1y agoIts impossible to know, they are in a longer fight with googs
- alabastervlog 1y agoI remain unconvinced they're (the whole LLM/"Attention Is All You Need" industry) even barking up the right tree to build anything usefully-close to "AGI".
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- mocmoc 1y agoThe iPhone was once in a lifetime thing. Jony was just one of the pieces
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- ericsilva 1y agoMust be one hell of a prototype.
- neuralkoi 1y agoThe comments on this article are very interesting. The next major device will definitely be AI-first. Apple is currently trying to jerry-rig AI into their existing product, the iPhone. This has so far not only been a complete failure, but is bound to be a complete failure in the end. The next Apple will be the one that creates an AI-first device entirely from scratch. AI lies at the core of everything it does. It's an AI assistant, a friend, another brain. It's not some BS summarizing engine that can't even do simple tasks like copy the name of a song playing on Spotify into Notes. That's what I think Jony Ive envisions.
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- fidotron 1y ago> The next major device will definitely be AI-first. Be more specific though: what form factor will such a device be in? A coffee maker? A phone? Glasses? Cars? A building? The AI wave seems to be hoping a whole load of hardware revolutions, such as holographic displays, will just appear out of the ether because it fits with their vision of how things should be.
- zachthewf 1y agoProbably glasses or airpods.
- qgin 1y agoIf Apple has an opening for an AI-first device, its AirPods with their own Apple Watch style SIP and data connection + replacing Siri with a real multimodal model.
- neuralkoi 1y agoI don't know! But Sam Altman seems to think Jony Ive does. If I did, I would be getting $6.5 billion in stock from OpenAI!
- yunwal 1y ago
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoWas "io" a company before this? Only Jony Ive thing I remember from the last number of years was LoveFrom creative studio...
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoInterview: Jony Ive on what he’s cooking up in San Francisco https://monocle.com/business/can-jony-ive-save-san-francisco-interview/ https://monocle.com/business/can-jony-ive-save-san-francisco...
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- justinzollars 1y agoWe love throwing cash at Jony Ive!
- jinay 1y agoLikely no coincidence that they announce their company, io, during Google I/O. Search "io" on Google right now and see what comes up...
- bobxmax 1y agoI'm pretty sure this was named years ago
- jinay 1y agoI'm more referring to launch timing
- jorams 1y ago> Search "io" on Google right now and see what comes up... I don't know about you, but neither of them comes up. Google I/O has always been something you have to search for including the "Google" part and this news is all about Jony Ive, not the nondescript company name.
- jinay 1y agoWent in an incognito window and searched "io" and this announcement was shown right above Google IO [1]. [1] https://i.imgur.com/xNKjFXa.png https://i.imgur.com/xNKjFXa.png
- rob 1y agoWhat's with the black and white "couples" photo? Seems like they're on the verge of kissing or something for a romantic novel cover.
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- ccbbccbb 1y agooh my.
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- poly2it 1y agoThis announcement is inexplicably amusing. It's like the announcement of the iPhone without the iPhone.
- ch4s3 1y agoThey've distilled the purest essence of Jony Ive.
- sllewe 1y agoIve has finally made something so thin - you can't even see it!
- polynomial 1y agolet me know when you're doing a standup set and I'll be there.
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- TechDebtDevin 1y agoI dont get it, so there's no actual product?
- klysm 1y agoPosturing and FOMO + shoveling money to friends
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- spruce_tips 1y agothe video on the homepage certainly is ai generated, no? all of the scenes in the cafe are definitely tripping my ai radar
- minimaxir 1y agoIt's a real restaurant. https://www.yelp.com/biz/cafe-zoetrope-san-francisco-4 https://www.yelp.com/biz/cafe-zoetrope-san-francisco-4
- spruce_tips 1y agodoesnt mean the video isnt ai generated
- WorldPeas 1y agocould be ai-enhanced
- tymscar 1y agoThe video they posted looks like its made with AI. Their movements and facial expressions are too uncanny
- spruce_tips 1y agoi thought so too. way too weird looking. there's a reason they zoomed on their faces whenever they were talking - to hide the unnatural hand movement
- synthmeat 1y agoSupra-aural headphones with a spherical camera rig would be really powerful ambient for first big AI-first product.
- owebmaster 1y agoThe perfect setup for blind people.
- asadotzler 1y agoI have a blind friend that's been getting value from the Meta Ray-Ban spectacles. He used to have spectacles that let a human see where he was going and offer suggestions/directions/descriptions/etc. but replaced those with this somewhat more private solution and found various compelling (in his descriptions to me) use cases. I personally think AI is going to land on "coding" and "accessibility" successfully and fail in most other domains.
- sethops1 1y ago$6,500,000,000 dollars for ... what, exactly?
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- mrweasel 1y ago55 engineers and the opportunity to be associated with Apple products via Jony Ive. Honestly with OpenAI buying Windsurf, and now this (whatever this is) I'd say that the company is in trouble and is now desperately attempting to buy it's way into relevancy. Either OpenAI wants to become a developer tools company (which can't be that profitable), or a consumer goods company. Trying to become the next Apple is really the only way to ever make the money they spend back. OpenAI is a failing company. They made the first move, that will be their claim to fame. Sadly it turned out that what they are doing isn't that hard to replicate, just hard to profit from.
- dbbk 1y agoI honestly think that Google is going to be the long term winner. They were behind at first, but now their models are the state of the art, and cheaper, and crucially Google as a whole makes enough money to float the business.
- mrweasel 1y agoGoogle and maybe Microsoft. Both have enough money to just outlast anyone else. LLMs aren't a bad idea, but they are at the current cost, that's just less of an issue to Google and Microsoft.
- netvarun 1y agoTangent: Did Windsurf actually get acquired by OpenAI? I would have imagined some sort of announcement from OpenAI at the very least? Bloomberg was the one to break that news too, but haven't seen any follow up.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mattegan 1y agoHas nobody learned anything from the Humane saga? I don't get it - if you have something so revolutionary and so great, just release it and let it speak for itself!
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- brk 1y agoThis was exactly my thought. Image HumaneRabbit R1LLM. Developed with an unlimited budget. It will be a $3000 paperweight assembled from the finest raw materials available.
- paul7986 1y agoFinally a GPT phone or personal AI mobile device looks to be in the works! I’m done with iPhone once GPT releases their personal mobile AI device! *Hmmm being downvoted the 500 million who use GPT daily won’t be excited to ditch iPhone for GPT phone? Love to hear why others think this isn’t a good idea?
- paxys 1y agoSo they paid $5B to hire Jony Ive? Is there even a product or just all vibes?
- tgma 1y agoAcquire as many companies to quickly dilute the OpenAI non-profit ownership.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Workaccount2 1y agoSmart move by OpenAI to try an cement their position as the "iPhone" of AI.
- npollock 1y agoif you own the device, you control the flow of data and dollars
- dudus 1y agoFirst Windsurf and now this. OpenAI is spending billions like there's nothing else to use this money for while being seemingly cash strapped for model training since they already signaled more investment rounds would be needed to remain competitive. They're trying to become too big to fail before they have a moat which won't work well.
- mlnj 1y agoWhat else are they going to do with all that money? Raise billions and billions under the guise of AGI coming tomorrow and they just become a too big to fail company gobbling up any competition. You don't hear anyone touting AGI anymore do we?
- mattlondon 1y ago> You don't hear anyone touting AGI anymore do we? Apart from, y'know, DeepMind - remember those guys? The ones with the SOTA models at the top of the leaderboards? The ones who just launched Veo3 and blew everyone away? It feels like OpenAI has kinda jumped-the-shark at this stage. They don't seem to be especially competitive any more, and all the news coming out of them is tinkering at the edges or acquisitions that no-one really cares about. When are they going to start competing on actual AI again?
- kridsdale1 1y ago90s Netscape vibes
- WorldPeas 1y agoAt least Netscape's offering was actually continuously open (after 98 at least)
- mattlondon 1y agoI feel like history is repeating itself yes, but actually I was thinking more a out Google. Everyone was saying "oh man - Google had all this tech and they sat on it and just couldn't move forwards, then they blew their lead and OpenAI came a long and smoked them!"... Now it feels like it is OpenAI who are repeating that story, blowing their lead they got with the original ChatGPT while that upstart Google schools them in model development and vertical integration. Interesting times. Very interesting times. C'mon OpenAI, move the SOTA forward!
- bflesch 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- gip 1y agoIt is fascinating how design has become the new gold standard in the AI era. It really looks the strongest signals come from taste and design quality and AI is killing other signals.
- ryanSrich 1y agoFunny how the reality is exactly the opposite of what you're saying. Design was already on life support and AI was the final plug pull.
- gip 1y agoFor some designs, sure — AI will likely generate most of the UX for, say, SaaS products. But when it comes to high-quality, innovative designs, humans will lead.
- hnlmorg 1y agoPeople were obsessed with design before the “AI era” too.
- paxys 1y agoWhat design are we talking about? An interface with a text input box at the bottom, chat view on top and a list of previous conversations on the left? Takes an entry level engineer a few hours to come up with that, not a $6.5B design firm and Jony Ive.
- i_have_an_idea 1y agoThis is the worst price to value ratio for an acquihire ever.
- lallaolala 1y ago[dead]
- vessenes 1y agoOpenAI board: "Should we dilute the company 2% to acquire Jony Ive for the next 10 years? Yes." Hacker News: "Man these OpenAI folks are idiots." OpenAI absolutely should be getting in the hardware game; Ive is a mix of status acquisition and unicorn, and is not the only person/team/company you'd need to make a quality hardware product. But on balance I'd pay 2% of every company I ever had any financial engagement with to get Mr. Ive doing its design. I mean srsly.
- mrweasel 1y agoAt the risk of being the idiot: Being very smart doesn't prevent you from saying and doing very stupid things. My problem is that Altman is a very smart idiot. He already admitted that OpenAI have absolutely no idea how to make money. Apparently they've now given up on the idea of asking ChatGPT how to make money. Their "AI" not going to develop fast enough, if ever. So now they are just buying up stuff left and right? It might be part of some coherent plan, but if it is, no one else is seeing it. Altman is smart enough to see that things are not working out and that he's going to run out of money and investor patience. He might also be smart enough to see that if OpenAI fails, so will 80 - 90% of his competitors, not sure if he care though. He needs OpenAI to survive, but he's not that kind of smart, and honestly I'm not sure anyone is.
- vessenes 1y agoI feel like we must live in very different worlds! The major AI companies have in excess of 100mm customers each. There’s so much demand for compute that wise investors are literally buying up nuclear plant building companies. LLMs have blown through every major test people have put in front of them invariably beating estimates as to how long it would take them. Pull up Dwarkesh’s podcast about ARC wherein the creator of ARC proposes it could likely never be super-human with current architectures, about 3 months before o3 provably became superhuman on ARC, spurring the creation of a new “better” (and it is better!) test. To my outside eyes the OpenAI plan is simple: get too big to fail and be ready to navigate changing investor appetite. Plus maintain technical leadership if possible. And build an enduring consumer brand. Simple but hard. You will note that (as far as I know) they have invested in zero direct physical infrastructure, preferring compute deals with companies like Microsoft and Coreweave. To my eyes their risk point would be: massive loss in quality/cost to a competitor (Gemini 2.5 pro underscores that Google is a real contender here, and has like six generations of custom chips that make their economics different), or somehow investors remain bullish on AI but bearish on OpenAI to the extent they can finance a legitimate competitor. If investors lose interest generally, we will enter a new era of higher-cost inference and comparatively less demand. This is the intent behind doing compute contracts rather than owning data centers — a contract likely shifts most of this risk right out onto data center providers; OpenAI can just pay for less compute time. I don’t think this is a ‘death’ scenario for them, because this will be a general loss of interest and therefore all AI companies will stop being able to give away free inference. OAI might contract (probably would) in this world. They might slow down on new model training. (Probably would). But, so would everyone else. Another way to say it - they’re spending single digit billions of dollars on training and research right now. Think of that as creating a strategic asset, and ALSO customer acquisition cost (e.g. image creation this year — new, better models = more paying customers). Against a 200mm customer base, would you spend $20-50 to acquire a customer that pays $20/month? Their CAC is low right now. Really low! This is why I’d propose the major risk is that they get singled out of the herd as ‘non-investable’ vis-a-vis other AI companies. To my eyes they don’t look to be at risk of this right now; if they somehow got there, this would be a real problem - it would lead to the scenario I think you’re imagining — they’d have no money to give away inference / train models, but competitors would. So, you have to ask, are they sufficiently large, popular, technology leaders, embedded as a strategic US asset in the military industrial complex to avoid that fate? My outside assessment is: definitely.
- redbell 1y ago> The purchase — the largest in OpenAI’s history Am I missing something here! Apart from Windsurf, what else did they acquire?
- tough 1y agoThey also where seed investors on Cursor actually sama was kicked out as CEO of YC because he was meddling too much openai-sub companies to prop them up and get a big chunk or smt. he also stole reddit lol, sorry i mean -acquired- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41657001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41657001
- zild3d 1y agoRockset - https://openai.com/index/openai-acquires-rockset/ https://openai.com/index/openai-acquires-rockset/
- vjvjvjvjghv 1y agoIt’s mind boggling how much money is floating around once you are part of the insider circle. What has that company been doing to be worth 6.5 billion?
- kridsdale1 1y agoThey made a very pretty font.
- The_Blade 1y agothat is more useful than more or less anything else that AI has practically achieved
- ryanSrich 1y agoI consider myself extremely plugged in to what's going on with AI and I still couldn't tell you what Ive's company does without looking it up
- criddell 1y agoMaybe the company is inconsequential and this is just about hiring Ive?
- ryanSrich 1y agoOh I'm sure that's the reason, but it still makes zero sense. Ive is incredibly overrated as a designer and visionary.
- cma 1y agoOverrated is great for raising the next investment round. It is much easier than convincing investors they are underrating someone you think would make a better choice to go with someone overrated instead. If he is overrated enough the increase from overratedness in the next investment round will pay for more than the acquisition cost.
- tough 1y agotbh has jony ive produced any remarkable hardware piece since he left apple? Can't think of any maybe im wrong he must be buying the name or something or just the brains idk
- tedivm 1y agoHonestly once Jobs died most of what Ive did was ruin existing products, such as the butterfly keyboard and the removal of all of the useful ports from their laptops.
- skellera 1y agoHe also ruined the Vision Pro on his way out. Engineers wanted to do wireless to a Mac mini-like hub (not standalone) so the hub could have more computing power. It’s a dev device that was supposed to be the very best experience for developing the future standalone AR/VR device. But Ives forced them to do full standalone. Increasing weight, decreasing power, wasting time re-engineering the device.
- emrah 1y agoJobs directing, filtering, complementing Ive was clearly the winning combination.
- zombiwoof 1y agoAlso remember Ive didn’t even plan for the watch to be fitness he wanted high end fashion. He’s not always the best. Lighting struck once and he says aluminum in a smart sounding way, give him a billion
- labadal 1y agoThe other archive link seems to be timing out for me, here's another one if you need it: https://archive.ph/AiEC0 https://archive.ph/AiEC0
- dboreham 1y agoAt least folks who are too young to have experienced sock puppets et al get to see what it was like.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ijidak 1y agoIve has made hits in the past. In hindsight, it might be a cheap acquihire.
- sixQuarks 1y agoThis is such an obvious jump the shark moment for openAI. These types of puffery acquisitions, with a former “legend”, announced with such gusto, have never materialized into anything. You’re not gonna get breakthrough products like this. Breakthrough products just appear unexpectedly, they’re not announced a year or two ahead of time.
- samtp 1y ago> In the interview, Altman said Jobs would be “damn proud” of Ive’s latest move. What an extremely weird (and egotistical) thing to say if you're in Altman's position
- brador 1y agoIt’s a trophy acqui-hire. Something to brag about over dinner and to investors.
- dowager_dan99 1y agoso Altman's nerd-equivalent of a sexual conquest?
- DevKoala 1y agoWhile Sam is being egotistic, the reverence of Jobs to the point nobody is even allowed to assume how he would have thought is also weird imho.
- samtp 1y agoI'm certainly not saying that "nobody is even allowed to assume how he would have thought". What I'm saying actually has very little to do with Jobs at all. I'm saying that as a new partner to someone, it's extremely weird to say that your old dead partner would be extremely proud you teamed up with me. If I were to marry a woman who lost her husband, it would be extremely weird and egotistical for me to tell people that her dead ex-husband would be "damn proud" that she married me.
- tqwhite 1y agoThis is the worst thread I have ever seen on Hacker News. Fatuous, self-important, superficial, judgmental. Do better people.
- paul7986 1y agoIt’s looks like to me a bunch of people who don’t use ChatGPT daily for everything under the sun. As once you let your imagination run wild with it ..you can see why 500 million use GPT daily to do so many varied things that u can’t go a day without using it and your usage of google is on the decline! Why you want to pick up your phone and have GpT right on ur Lock Screen do to everything under the sun including having it interface with AI agents to book travel, book a local tow truck, reserve whatever, ask questions about friends & family via their own agents, etc
- maerF0x0 1y agoBelow is wild speculation: > Five years to the week after he walked away from the top job designing the iPhone [1] Sounds to me like OpenAI is going to make it's own consumer device. Maybe designed by the AI itself. The AI Is choosing it's own body? [1]: https://archive.is/yixNr#selection-615.0-615.81 https://archive.is/yixNr#selection-615.0-615.81 "After Apple, Jony Ive Is Building an Empire of His Own" - NYT
- _se 1y agoIf you think current "AI" can design and build a consumer device, I have a lot of bridges that I'd like to sell you.
- sandspar 1y agoFuture AI will deserve a say in the design of its own body, right? Maybe it's not smart enough now, but as it dawns into personhood it'll likely gain some legal rights, including perhaps over its own body. Anyhow, as the AI's gain personhood there will likely be human-led movements to give them more rights. It'll be seen as gauche or gross to do things to AI without consulting it.
- zblevins 1y agoThis is very utopian.
- MisterSandman 1y agoYou can’t casually say “AI’s gain personhood.” That is so far out in the future, that’s beyond AGI.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- lordofmoria 1y agoI don't understand all the pessimism and incredulity about the valuation. This is an acquisition to take on and disrupt Apple. Ives + Altman is perceived as a viable successor to the Ives + Jobs partnership that made Apple successful. Apple is weak and doesn't seem capable of innovating anymore, nor do they seem to understand how to build AI into products. There's an opportunity to build an Apple-sized hardware wearables company with AI at its core, just as Altman built ChatGPT and disrupted the Google-sized search. "Apple-sized" more than justifies a 5B valuation.
- samtp 1y agoHow exactly does OpenAI go about disrupting Apple? Are they going to build an entire OS, line of hardware products, and create a massive developer ecosystem to for apps to be available? I just don't exactly see how that is done by hiring a bunch of designers to a company whose current offering is a chatbot & API interface.
- voidspark 1y ago[dead]
- kookamamie 1y agoAltman ain't no Jobs, though.
- sponnath 1y agoI don't think ChatGPT really disrupted Google search? It definitely forced Google to release Gemini + related products though. Google still has millions of users and they now have AI integrated with search. The latest Gemini models are also as capable if not more than some of OAI's models. I don't see how Altman is going to disrupt Apple with just Ive and a company no one's heard of before.
- Pxtl 1y agoOpenAI's business model seems to be "technological singularity or bust".
- xgolwks 1y agoWhat the other commenters are forgetting is that this is the same Sam Altman who planned and executed the extraction of Reddit from Condé Nast. This acquisition (and the Windsurf acquisition) are all-stock deals, which have the added benefit of reducing the control the nonprofit entity has over the for profit OpenAI entity. How do you extract the for profit entity out of the hands of a nonprofit? - Step 1: you have close friends or partners at a company - with no product, users, or revenue - valued at 6.5billion. - Step 2: you acquire that entity, valuing it unreasonably high so that the nonprofit’s stake is diluted. - And now control of OpenAI (the PBC) is in the hands of for profit entities.
- brap 1y agoSam also ran a crypto scam called WorldCoin. Their secret sauce was tricking poor people in Africa.
- moralestapia 1y ago>ran Nope [1]. 1: https://world.org/ https://world.org/
- Gothmog69 1y agoHow did they trick them by giving them free money?
- s_ting765 1y agoFree crypto. There's a difference.
- HenryBemis 1y agoThey are paying 'one worldcoin' (I've read sold about $50) to places that give zero value to their privacy (too difficult to care for privacy when starving to death and the monthly salary is $10). They are targeting poor countries (South America, Africa). Once they have collected 'enough' faces to use on their AI, they could possibly pull the plug or keep it as a social experiment. I was thinking, there is no way Russia or China will allow them to operate in their countries, and (combined) they got 1.5bn people. I can also see them trying that to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other autocratic ..stan places, where the local dictator would only allow this if they got to use the data for their own nefarious purposes.
- yalogin 1y agoThis is the only play for OpenAI. The AI service is going to be commoditized very very quickly and their moat will be gone. They will be doing vertical integration and push into everything. If people complained apple and google looked at apps and copied the functionality themselves what OpenAI will do will be much worse. Also when it took apple and google years to do it, OpenAI will do it very very quickly, in a year most
- pizzathyme 1y agoThe other play is they build chatgpt.com into a destination. Two major data points to this: [1] Over 400M weekly actives, and [2] recent reports that chatgpt will be adding X.com / social network style features
- yahoozoo 1y agoAlso known as “getting into the advertisement business”
- disgruntledphd2 1y agoI mean they hired Fidji Simo so it's almost certain they'll try out ads.
- dcchambers 1y agoTheir technical moat is already gone. Their remaining moat is basically captured developer mindshare/inertia. That is important, but given how easy it is to swap out back-end models, and how good other models are - ultimately cost is going to win. And it's currently a race to the bottom in pricing.
- woah 1y agoA collaboration built upon friendship, curiosity and shared values quickly grew in ambition. Tentative ideas and explorations evolved into tangible designs. The ideas seemed important and useful. They were optimistic and hopeful. They were inspiring. They made everyone smile. They reminded us of a time when we celebrated human achievement, grateful for new tools that helped us learn, explore and create.
- The_Blade 1y agothis doesn't sound like it was written by an actual human being. or even a cat
- sherr 1y agoToday I read a couple of book reviews in the Economist with Sam Altman as the subject. The books are : The Optimist. By Keach Hagey Empire of AI. By Karen Hao The reviews are positive for both books. The column itself is titled "Sam Altman is a visionary with a trustworthiness problem" and shows a few reasons people have had some problems with his behaviour. One quote from the article is : "Ms Livingston fired him, but as Ms Hagey recounts, he left chaos in his wake. Not only was he overseen by a non-functioning board, he had also used YC equity to help lure people to OpenAI. She says some YC partners saw a potential conflict of interest, “or at least an unseemly leveraging of the YC brand for Altman’s personal projects”." Sam Altman is a visionary with a trustworthiness problem https://archive.is/oANfs https://archive.is/oANfs "Two books tell a similar tale about OpenAI. It is worrying"
- hinkley 1y agoSounds a little like Holmes.
- adamnemecek 1y agoHolmes never showed anything.
- hinkley 1y agoWell she showed lies.
- tastyface 1y agoAltman funds and cavorts with fascists. This project is soiled from day one.
- sandspar 1y agoThey say they'll design a "fully novel" type of product - what does that mean? If we take them at their word then it rules out glasses, watches, phones, laptops, and headphones. What does that leave? What seems most in line with Johnny Ive's minimalism is necklaces, rings, or pendants. Could we see some kind of AI brooch in 2026?
- the_arun 1y agoSam Altman already has a hardware company "World" - https://world.org/cofounder-letter https://world.org/cofounder-letter which works on Orb (a hardware). Not sure if there is any connection between these.
- maronato 1y ago> Introducing Worldcoin > After visiting an Orb, a biometric verification device, you will receive a World ID. > For each unique human who verifies their World ID with your Orb, you will earn WLD tokens. > World Operators are independent local business owners or entrepreneurs who help make World available in their local communities. > Make a USD $100 deposit to secure your priority for an Orb. Really going for a full score on the scam checklist.
- t1234s 1y agoWhat are the chances of seeing an "OpenAI Phone"?
- piskov 1y agozero
- yahoozoo 1y ago> At io, the group set out to develop, engineer and manufacturer a collection of products for an era of artificial general intelligence — the point when technology achieves humanlike cognitive abilities. And everyone cringed.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- AISnakeOil 1y agoA solution looking for a problem. We already have devices which can access AI with ease. I don't need your proprietary data farming apis in the OS level...
- mk_stjames 1y agoFrom the same people that brought you "Vibe Coding", comes "Vibe Acquisitions".
- hinkley 1y agoVibes goeth before a fall.
- game_the0ry 1y agoThe feature image for that article is a but too suggestive.
- I_am_tiberius 1y agoWhat people don't seem to notice: Jony is wearing the glasses and appears to be reading from them.
- elAhmo 1y agoOr he is just looking at the camera? An odd photo in any case.
- I_am_tiberius 1y agoWas just saying that glasses are most likely the product they're talking about.
- msephton 1y agoHis glasses are hand made by Maison Bonnet, Paris, France.
- fiatpandas 1y agoIt's a screenless & buttonless phone. Slightly smaller form factor than regular iphone, with comparatively bigger battery and powerful processing for on-device models.
- piskov 1y agoImagine listening to all the comments you just read. Or reading them in the UI with only one word at a time on screen. That’s why 80% or what have you of information is percieved via eyes.
- anonzzzies 1y agoSo does openai know how to widen the context window without it taking more money? Otherwise Google wins, again. And this is all boring. Gemini 2.5 pro preview where you can just insert all files you have and actually it doesn't compress and has it in memory is just what you want. All the compression tricks etc really are shit compared. 32k input tokens is a joke now once you tried this. As in bearish on openai if they don't offer cheaper 10m context soonish. Google will.
- asadm 1y agobingo. chatgpt does some summarization/memory thing recently. It's meh tbh.
- zoogeny 1y agoI agree we are watching the turning point. If raw AI power is the key, Google seems to be in pole position form here on out. They can make their own TPUs, have their own data center. No need to "Stargate" with Oracle and Softbank in tow. Google also has Android, YouTube and G-Suite. However, OpenAI has been going down the product route for a few years now. After a spout of high-profile research exits it is clear Altman has purged the ranks and can now focus on product development. So if product is a sufficient USP, and if Altman can deliver a better product, they still have a chance. I guess that is where Ive comes into picture. And Google is notoriously bad at product that is internally developed.
- samtp 1y agoA lot of ifs there. When judging how likely Altman would be to deliver a better product, what other product has he delivered besides an orb that scans your eyeballs in exchange for crypto?
- disgruntledphd2 1y agoI mean, I guess the OPs argument is not that Altman is good at product, but that Google are pretty bad. And historically, that's definitely been true. I do think they're doing well on the AI front at the moment, but who knows if that will continue.
- bhewes 1y agoClassic hacker news Gnosticism making fun of a designer. The idea the iphone software ecosystem had anything to do with its success is humorous. Remember it didn't even have an app store or anyway to run local yet it was a best seller. Keep worshiping code like it doesn't run on hardware, ha.
- bsimpson 1y agoIt's been <20y since YouTube was acquired for $1B, which felt like an imaginary valuation at the time, but it was for a company that actually had traction with users. Inflation-adjusted, this acquisition is worth 4x that for… vibes from a guy who led a famous team a long time ago?
- paxys 1y agoMoney isn't real anymore.
- tmpz22 1y agoMoney is very, very, real for people below the poverty line.
- josfredo 1y agoPeople below the poverty line are real. But are they really “very, very” real?
- t1E9mE7JTRjf 1y agoThey are in fact, very, very, VERY real.
- t1E9mE7JTRjf 1y agoSure, but is that relevant? I'm not sure people below the poverty line are acquiring SV companies. In this case as I understand it, no money is being paid - it's a stock deal. For stock that isn't yet publicly trading, thus 'priced' pretty speculatively. So it is pretty abstract, and unreal.
- rchaud 1y agoMoney is real. Privately held company valuations are not. This is an all-stock deal, so what it's "worth" is entirely in the eye of the beholder. Its value rises and falls based on how long the hype train can keep running, or how much they can offload to Mayasoshi Son and Arab Gulf sovereign funds.
- SlimIon729 1y agoI don't know... looks like pure marketing
- cryptoz 1y agoI hope it's not just another orb that talks to you. Maybe they're making humanoids, that's all the rage now... I do wonder what they have built! Surely something right?
- TeeWEE 1y agoWow Sam Altman is so full of himself... I would never want to work for this narcist. Just watch this video. https://x.com/sama/status/1925242282523103408 https://x.com/sama/status/1925242282523103408
- mehh 1y agoI tried but it was too much, first I thought it was a spoof, then perhaps AI generated and then couldn't watch no more!
- joshstrange 1y agoI thought this was going to be some hit-piece tweet then I saw it was a tweet from Sam Altman himself. That video... Wow. I got in 2min before I had to stop. I thought you might be over-exaggerated but full of /themselves/ doesn't even begin to describe it. Ship something, then you can create a video like that, not before.
- jes5199 1y agothis is designed to appeal directly to a certain kind of self-mythologizing Bay Area techie, the kind that was common in the early 2010s. It’s meant to signal continuity, “we’re just like you, we loved Steve Jobs” apparently it worked on some people: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/05/21/sam-and-jony-io https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/05/21/sam-and-jony-io
- basisword 1y agoI agree the first minute or two of this was very cringe. I stuck with it though and it reminded me very much of the kind of talk that was common in the late '00s tech scene. Sort of nice to see that kind of optimism again.
- sumeno 1y ago[flagged]
- xdennis 1y agoNot the same person, but as an example, I got banned from r/europe for posting just "I'm proud to be a Romanian!". That was on a post about Romania overtaking Poland to become number one at some anti-woke metric western Europeans care a lot about.
- torginus 1y agoI for example, got permabanned from one of the major politics subreddits. Basically what happened was I wrote a post, and some guy responded to me with a firehose of personal insults. I called him a troll in reply, and within 30 seconds of posting said reply, I was permabanned as a first offense, without any possibility of appeal. Mods be powertrippin over there.
- sumeno 1y agoBeing banned from a subreddit is different from a permaban from reddit that "tracks you across google accounts"
- pesus 1y agoI'm guessing that person signed up with a Google account that was connected to other Google accounts, and when they tried to make a new account it was flagged as "ban evasion".
- to11mtm 1y agoI'll give my example, although it's a bit out of place on my part... /r/news locked/suppressed [0] as 'Politics'. I sent a Message to modmail: Me: Calling this 'politics' makes me ask who's on the an alphabet payroll... Just saying. Reply from modmail: This message makes us think you haven't bothered to read the rules... Just saying. Then I was muted from /r/new modmail for 28 days, while also being perma-banned from /r/news. Months layer, I had left a normal comment on a different thread with a 'mobile' secondary account on /r/news, and found both my desktop and mobile accounts locked for 7 days because the /r/news comment was considered 'ban evasion'. Despite having otherwise commented on /r/news from my mobile account in the meantime with no repercussions. It was within the subreddit rules and reddit TOC to do all of this, I acknowledge, at the same time it's almost like Reddit is hitting that vibe of StackOverflow from a few years ago where mods can just power trip and make the place less useful for everyone... [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1es7sbp/us_considers_breaking_up_google_after_illegal/ https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1es7sbp/us_considers_...
- 123sereusername 1y ago[dead]
- rifty 1y agoI don't doubt that Ive can make a product team that will deliver something, but how does something so clearly aware it was going to evoke feelings of Jobs' Apple, end up so cluelessly narcissistic in delivery in such a non Jobs way. Are they infatuated about the product and the experience or what partnering up means to these two men's self-image?
- laser 1y agoGiven it’s a stock deal the question simply put is does bringing the highest profile technology designer in the world along with his team into OpenAI increase its terminal value by more than ~2%? If so, the acquisition is a success. Discussions of revenues and valuations and egos have little bearing on this question. To me it seems like an easy win on talent alone, let alone optics, network, and impact on future talent and capital conglomeration.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- nobench 1y agoSam is playing 4D chess here. He needs top-tier talent and design to build the next generation of AI hardware, and this move pulls in both capital and talent. Going after Apple—the king of consumer hardware—makes perfect sense: either OpenAI builds the iPhone killer or forces Apple to make a move. They’ve won the web interface so far, but don’t own an OS or device layer, so this helps solve that long-term strategic gap. And since it’s an all-equity deal, there’s basically no downside—John stays aligned, and OpenAI now has elite software and hardware talent under one roof. Huge value unlock.
- multiplegeorges 1y agoIdentical comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44056251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44056251
- iamiamai 1y agoSam is playing 4D chess here. He needs top-tier talent and design to build the next generation of AI hardware, and this move pulls in both capital and talent. Going after Apple—the king of consumer hardware—makes perfect sense: either OpenAI builds the iPhone killer or forces Apple to make a move. They’ve won the web interface so far, but don’t own an OS or device layer, so this helps solve that long-term strategic gap. And since it’s an all-equity deal, there’s basically no downside—John stays aligned, and OpenAI now has elite software and hardware talent under one roof. Huge value unlock
- multiplegeorges 1y agoIdentical comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44056238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44056238
- purplezooey 1y agoMore like pickleball
- elAhmo 1y agoBuying a company without a product (or anything announced), without a website, with its founder not even joining after an acquisition. So, not really an aquihire either. I am sure this aligns with the non-profit part of OpenAI whose board allegedly has influence of where the company is heading. This industry is amazing.
- firtoz 1y ago> with its founder not even joining after an acquisition. So, not really an aquihire either. What do you mean? > Sir Jony Ive will “assume deep design and creative responsibilities” to build new products for OpenAI
- fckgw 1y agoSounds like OpenAI is basically just becoming a client of LoveFrom, Ive's design firm.
- dr_dshiv 1y ago$6,500,000,000…
- elAhmo 1y ago> Ive won’t be joining OpenAI, and his design firm, LoveFrom, will continue to be independent, but they will “take over design for all of OpenAI, including its software,” in a deal valued at nearly $6.5 billion
- firtoz 1y agoWow, that's... unexpected. In the video they were saying "merging" but I guess reality shows something else. So he's pretty much gifting a nice amount of OpenAI stock to his friend, and also handing over all design responsibilities. Nice.
- fuzzfactor 1y ago
- xyst 1y agoLook at all of these big names that OpenAI is attaching itself to. Buy "nobody company" from Jony Ive (using stock) This incessant need to associate themselves with highly known individuals and over the top announcements reminds me of "Theranos" and infamous con artist, Elizabeth Holmes. Sam Altman sure knows how to sell. I wonder how much longer he can keep the con going, even though many of the original founders have left. Maybe 2-3 more years of this dog and pony show before it all comes crashing down in the most spectacular way.
- yahoozoo 1y agoUnless OpenAI is going to also buy a robotics company and Ive is there to design the robot exterior, what else would they make aside from some wearable that just runs an LLM with heavy emphasis on the audio/speech modality? I have the feeling whatever it is will be uninspired and a giant let down.
- lukev 1y agoI saw a quote today that's been living rent-free in my head ever since: "AI utilitarians are in a suicide pact with the U.S. economy" (attribution: @bencollins.bsky.social)
- gerash 1y agoThe video Altman posted on Twitter is so cringe I wouldn’t be surprised if it was directed by Mike Judge
- ctkhn 1y agoI couldn't even watch the whole thing, such a fake glaze fest
- incoming1211 1y agoJony Ive is a nobody without Steve Jobs. After Jobs passed he never produced anything of any value, he almost destroyed Macbooks.
- davidham 1y agoApple Watch was and is a huge hit.
- ks2048 1y agoOne could argue Apple Watch has just been coasting on iPhones’ coat tails. People with an iPhone want a watch with similar aesthetics and in the same ecosystem. If a non-Apple company launched an identical watch at the same time it would have gone nowhere.
- matwood 1y agoThe AW became a huge hit in spite of Ive wanting it to be a fashion item. Remember the $10k versions? The version of the AW that everyone has and loves is not the Ive version.
- miffy900 1y agoThat's probably overstating it; it is definitely true that his redesign of iOS 7 (2013) was truly awful - he really should not have been anywhere near software, and was able to take advantage of Scott Forstall's then bad reputation and recent dismissal to insert himself in an area he had no real qualifications for. Before that, he was purely a hardware guy and it was clear from the outset he was in over his head with software. Apparently he had no idea what 'HCI' (human computer interaction) even meant; wasn't even familiar with the abbreviation itself. Now with the benefit of hindsight, we can judge that iOS 7 had some truly terrible design decisions that ended up making the iPhone much harder to use (very light, unbolded text everywhere, removal of borders on everything especially buttons, over use of color tints on text). What I always found crazy was that Ive seemed to just take design ideas from then Windows 8 and Windows Phone more than trying to create his own thing. It showed that he had no original ideas of his own; even just iteratively improving on iOS 6 would've been better. On Mac hardware, he definitely needed some sort of editor to stay his hand post Jobs. The era of crappy butterfly Macbook keyboards is still something I remember that was clearly his responsibility, driven by obsession on thinness and it seemed for a while that Apple was in denial about the issue. Still, the Apple Watch is a definite hit for Apple now and it's clearly his baby, so his legacy isn't all bad.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 1y agoOpenAI spinning into consumer hardware is a significant loss of focus for the company. I can only explain it with them recognizing that their strongest asset is brand mindshare. This is actually really bad for their outlook as AI model pioneers. Eventually it was going to be the case that AI will spread around. It can't be contained, it's too easy to distill and hence copy from output. But I admit I didn't expect it to happen that soon. Also I respect Jony Ive, but expect his "AI devices" to all fail in the market. He's an idealist. He needs counterbalance that he currently lacks.
- Bjorkbat 1y agoA while back someone here on Hacker News made a pretty insightful comment that as great of a designer as Jony Ive is, a large part of his success is owed to the fact that he had an "editor" in the form of Steve Jobs. Once Jobs passed, he no longer really had an editor. It remains to be seen whether Sam Altman / OpenAI in general will be a good editor
- m-s-y 1y agoHow so? I don’t believe that Ive is going along with the purchase.
- Animats 1y agoNo? It's not a acqui-hire? The article says "joining forces with the legendary designer to make a push into hardware." Nobody says what kind of hardware. A wearable is the likely bet. Maybe a home robot, but that's a few years out.
- browningstreet 1y agoOpenAI has recruited Jony Ive, the designer behind Apple’s iPhone, to lead a new hardware project for the artificial intelligence company that makes ChatGPT. .. OpenAI said it already owns a 23% stake in io from a prior collaborative agreement signed late last year. It says it will now pay $5 billion in equity for the acquisition. .. OpenAI said Ive will not become an OpenAI employee and LoveFrom will remain independent but “will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io.” https://apnews.com/article/jony-ive-openai-chatgpt-52c72786e54f0ead8b04d037c30d6754 https://apnews.com/article/jony-ive-openai-chatgpt-52c72786e...
- pacerier 1y agoThe link however isn't informative since "independent" can mean its opposite. Along with every other word in the article. We are after all literally talking about the guy who called openai "open"ai? Even your kid knows that none of the words used need make any sense.
- 1y ago
- dr_dshiv 1y agoJust need a way to talk to ChatGPT anytime. Microphone, speaker and permanent connection to ChatGPT. That’s all you need: io One need is being able to talk to ChatGPT in a whisper or silent voice… so you can do it in public. I don’t think that comes from them, but it will be big when it does. Much easier than brain implants! In an ear device, you need enough data of listening to the muscles and the sounds together, then you can just listen to the muscles… I assume they want to have their own OS that is, essentially, their models in the cloud. so, here are my specific predictions 1. Subvocalization-sensing earbuds that detect "silent speech" through jaw/ear canal muscle movements (silently talk to AI anytime) 2. An AI OS laptop — the model is the interface 3. A minimal pocket device where most AI OS happens in the cloud 4. an energy efficient chip that runs powerful local AI, to put in any physical object 5. … like a clip. Something that attaches to clothes. 6. a perfect flat glass tablet like in the movies (I hope not) 7. ambient intelligent awareness through household objects with microphones, sensors, speakers, screens —
- Animats 1y agoThe form factor that suggests is an AR headset. Google, Meta, and others have those. They're all flops. Too bulky. Carmack has said that for VR/AR to get any traction, the headgear needs to come down to swim goggle size, and to go mainstream, it has to come down to eyeglass size. He's probably right. Ive would be the kind of guy to push in that direction.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- hn_throwaway_99 1y ago> Carmack has said that for VR/AR to get any traction, the headgear needs to come down to swim goggle size, and to go mainstream, it has to come down to eyeglass size. He's probably right. Ive would be the kind of guy to push in that direction. I agree with the first 2 sentences, but not the last. Everyone and their grandmother knows size and bulkiness are big blockers to VR/AR adoption. But the reason we don't have an Apple Vision Pro in an eyeglasses form factor isn't an issue of design, it's an issue of physics. Meta seems to have decent success with their Ray Bans, which can basically do all the "ask AI" use cases, but true VR/AR fundamentally require much bulkier devices, most of all for battery life.
- Deprogrammer9 1y ago[flagged]
- diasf 1y agoAfter thinking for sometime it seems like even though Sam doesn't have any stake in io, he might have a stake in the Thrive fund that invested in io. Put $50M in a Thrive fund, which is used to invest in io that ultimately gets acquired by OpenAI at a really high valuation. Joshua from Thrive anyways wanted Sam to have some stake and the numbers being floated around was of the order of $7B. The whole thing seems absurd and makes me trust OpenAI even less.
- diasf 1y agoAnd seems like it is actually trying to give a bonus to Sam or give money back to Thrive otherwise it would make no sense to acquire io with $1.5B cash in addition to the stock. I am surprised that the board approved this?
- ants_everywhere 1y agoI have a feeling OpenAI will eventually be looked back on as the company that forced Google to release its internal AI product and then died a slow death.
- KolibriFly 1y agoBut can they transition from being "the lab that shocked the world" to a sustainable product company in a hyper-competitive space?
- agos 1y agoI would be very, very surprised if any of the players in this space can make anything sustainable.
- intexpress 1y agoThe video was filmed at Francis Ford Coppola's cafe. Worth a visit, the last time I was there they had a machine that printed out stories for you to take home.
- herval 1y agoSuccess begets success indeed. What did Ive's startup ship in its 6 years that's worth 6 billion dollars, other than it belonging to Ive?
- piskov 1y agoThere were a lot of stuff: leica, moncler jacket, turntable, some prints and typography, a lot of stuff for airbnb, you name it
- lofaszvanitt 1y agoIve is waaaay overrated. At least he brought a lot of fresh blood into the company. And Microsoft is just terrible with anything design related, so this might be a cool move, but MS is also terrible in acquiring companies and then letting them work.
- dgs_sgd 1y agoDoes io even have a company website? I cannot find anything about it on Google except for the acquisition news..
- sjfaljf 1y agoWonder if both companies have a common investor who wanted to cash out and save at least part of the bag.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- inatreecrown2 1y agoJust for a moment i imagined a world in which Jony Ive befriended the Internet Archive and they joined to start a new company called io.
- m3kw9 1y agoWhatever it is, if it’s AR, they won’t have the resources to do it. If they go Humaine’s clip voice assistant/projection, it’s dead on arrival. If they can do AR, it will be at meta Rayban level. What I’m saying is there is a real physical tech constraint where I’ve noticed the top hardware makers are hitting. There really isn’t too many ways to interface with AI
- aibrother 1y agothe timing feels a bit off. is the hardware / form really the limiting factor to AI adoption at this moment in time?
- Aeroi 1y agoHiring a prolific designer, won't buy you the next iPhone. In fact, $6b would have been better spent on the supply chain, the manufacturing intelligence in Asia, and the dirty and difficult work of producing hardware. People forget, how much work is actually needed to produce some innovation like this at scale.
- jorgenveisdal 1y agoFor all those (like me) who still believed in the spirit of Steve (via Jony Ive). We were wrong. He's about the money like the rest of em.
- leowoo91 1y agoI feel like they are trying let public invent the product they will work on..
- crsv 1y agoI can’t wait to see what machined aluminum experience they come up with together.
- crossroadsguy 1y ago> “I have a growing sense that everything I’ve learned over the last 30 years has led me to this place and to this moment,” Ive said in a joint interview with OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman Ah. What synergy, what serendipity. Right there. Nice photo by the way — https://d7bnjsbkcwmq2m.archive.is/HgpSJ/945183ffb15e984274fa4db0bc98370e22c17470.webp https://d7bnjsbkcwmq2m.archive.is/HgpSJ/945183ffb15e984274fa...
- octo888 1y agoThat photo is hella creepy. Hopefully it was AI generated
- camillomiller 1y agoI am baffled by the photo. I would have sworn it’s AI, instead apparently it’s a real photo? As someone who deals with pictures professionally and has experience with editorial photo editing, I am seriously disturbed but this.
- marhee 1y agoWould be quite funny if Apple now acquires OpenAI.
- gamificationpan 1y ago[flagged]
- KolibriFly 1y agoIt feels like the AI world is hitting a kind of hardware inflection point
- Snuggly73 1y agoI am utterly confused. If AGI is around the corner, this means that the economy is going to be destroyed and money are going to lose their meaning. Who is going to buy your AI gadget? Why spend money on that and Windsurf?
- lm28469 1y agoIf AGI is around the corner why are people leaving openai ? Why is openai diversifying ? &c.
- robertlagrant 1y agoThe economy isn't going to be destroyed even if AGI were round the corner.
- Snuggly73 1y agoInteresting - how do you reconcile mass unemployment with working economy? (And this is honest question from one that is invested and hopeful that their life savings won’t evaporate overnight)
- robertlagrant 1y agoI don't think there's any reason to believe there'll be mass unemployment. Any job where human is cheaper than automation will stay human, or where people want a human and are willing to pay for it. Those jobs are probably most of the jobs, although I don't have data to back that claim up. Also it's worth noting that if automation in the right areas has its intended effects, costs of living should come down, making the cost of a human less, not more[0], and moving the bar for what is worth automating higher and higher [0] modulo policy decisions that raise the cost of living back up
- palmotea 1y ago>> The economy isn't going to be destroyed even if AGI were round the corner. > Interesting - how do you reconcile mass unemployment with working economy? (And this is honest question from one that is invested and hopeful that their life savings won’t evaporate overnight) Define "working economy." Ultimately, "the economy" is the market and the market is about satisfying the desires of the people with the money to participate. The economy will keep working if there's mass unemployment. You reconcile that by realizing the economy isn't a system for taking care of everyone, or optimizing for mass human flourishing. Unemployment just means the money-havers have no use for you anymore, and you can go FOAD.
- buryat 1y agoHow much value was created using products created by Jony Ive and his team?
- rajnathani 1y agoI remember seeing a device in tech news which was like a Mutalk [0] but without the mouth-piece. I cannot find the device (side: in fact, even to find Mutalk took ChatGPT's help as search-results were all about general noise-cancelling headphones), but if something like that is possible and what Jony Ive's stealth startup is working on, then this acquisition makes sense. Otherwise, if this AI consumer personal device is to be a thing, then I do not expect speaking aloud into a pin is ever going to become a reality (similar to how Google Glasses failed and that consumer AR devices will fail for generations to come). [0] https://en.shiftall.net/products/mutalk https://en.shiftall.net/products/mutalk
- nottorp 1y agoDoes Ive's "AI" have an unhealthy thinness fetish?
- fcap 1y agoOpenAI will pay most of the deal with an inflated evaluation. It could be that Jony wakes up one morning and finds OpenAI back at the ground. Sam is a master hype and inflation. He has cracked the code to generate free money and pays the companies with OpenAI equity.
- Madetocomment 1y agoThey could've just ChatGPT'd the design
- antfarm 1y ago$6.5 billion? Not bad for a company that doesn't even have a website.
- DebtDeflation 1y agoOr, near as I can tell, any customers or any revenue. And apparently 55 employees.
- basisword 1y agoIt's interesting reading through the comments here. Lots of people slating Jony Ive. Is it a newer generation that doesn't know his work or an older generation that's forgotten? The man has produced some of the greatest design work in the last few decades. Sure there were missteps (particularly in the quest for thinness in the laptop products) but he led design on some of the most iconic products and some of the most widely used products of all time. iMac G3/4/5. iBook. iPod/Mini/Nano/Shuffle. iPhone. MacBook Air. iPad. Apple Watch. Not one person or company even comes close to having that kind of influence globally.
- neilellis 1y agoSo Sam has found a way to pay himself.
- tronicjester 1y agoHow will this not provoke an investigation from the FBI?
- chairmansteve 1y agoReminds me of Yahoo buying Broadcast.com for $6billion in 1999. They did it to pump up their stock price, pretend they had a strategy. Made Mark Cuban a billionaire. Probably there is a big grey market in OpenAI shares, and this is a similar strategy.
- 1290cc 1y agoDoesnt Altman own 20% of Ive's "startup"?