OpenAI's acquisition of Ive's io startup could disrupt Google and Apple's strategies, impacting the tech landscape and raising stakes in the AI race.

OpenAI is acquiring Jony Ive and Sam Altman's startup, io, which will lead creative and design work for OpenAI.

A day later, Jony Ive and Sam Altman kicked down the door and told Google, “Hold my beer.”

Well-funded and big-name partnerships often end in failure. And ex-Apple employees don’t have a great record of success.

Hours after Sam Altman and Jony Ive announced on Wednesday that OpenAI was buying Ive’s company, io, in an all-stock transaction valued at $6.5 billion, Investors were happy about the hefty returns they got from the sale of io to OpenAI.

Jony Ive, the famed designer who joined Steve Jobs to develop Apple’s most popular products, will now curate new devices for OpenAI after his startup was acquired by Sam Altman’s firm earlier this week,

OpenAI forms a new hardware division with the io team, led by Jony Ive, to develop AI-native devices, possibly launching a voice-first product as early as 2026.

There have been public failures as well, such as the Humane AI Pin and the Rabbit R1 personal assistant device. “Those were very poor products,” said Ive, 58. “There has been an absence of new ways of thinking expressed in products.”

I really hope OpenAI's new hardware doesn't make me talk to myself in public.