Before revolutionizing technology with Steve Jobs, Jony Ive wanted to leave Apple. Now he forges a new pair of power with Sam Altman from Openai

Creator Jony Ive, better known for her work on everything, from iPac to iPhone, wanted to leave Apple before Steve Jobs returned as CEO.

Instead, he stayed in the technological business for almost three decades and revolutionized the consumer electronics. Now he undertakes a new business and seeks to do the same with AI.

While I act embarks on a new partnership with Sam Altman of Openai, here is an overview of the way he has become one of the best known technological designers in the world, with the help of an icon of Silicon Valley.

IVE joined Apple in 1992 after graduating from Newcastle Polytechnic, now Northumbria University, in the United Kingdom and began its career by creating its own design business, Tangerine, according to biography Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. After Tangerine obtained a contract with Apple, IVE moved to Cupertino, California, London to take a job in the design department, where the young designer quickly went up the ranks and became head of the department in 1996.

However, Ive was not happy, and in fact, he plans to stop. Under the then CEO, Gil Amelio, IVE estimated that the company focused too much on profits, and its designers had to spit models for the outside of products, while engineers made inside the products also work at lower cost as possible.

This dynamic changed when the co -founder Steve Jobs returned in 1997 after being ousted more than a decade before. In one of his first discussions with the employees, Isaacson wrote, IVE remembered that jobs specifically said that the company's mission was “not only to earn money but to make excellent products”. To hear this message convinced 4th to stay.

While Jobs first looked outside Apple for a design partner, he liked IVE for his seriousness during a visit to the Apple design department, Isaacson wrote.

“We have discussed approaches to forms and materials,” IVE told Isaacson. “We were on the same wavelength. I suddenly understood why I loved the business. ”

Jobs, for his part, has developed a special link with IVE despite their age difference, wrote Isaacson. The designer, who was supposed to appear at the head of the material division, later became a frequent visitor to the Jobs house and regularly lunch with the CEO. The often very critical jobs even seemed to spare the worst of its explosions.

“Most people in Steve's life are replaceable. But not Jony,” Steve Jobs widow told Isaacson.

Their admiration was mutual. D'IVE, JOBS said to Isaacson: “He obtains the overview as well as the most infinitesimal details on each product. And he understands that Apple is a product company. It is not only a designer.”

IVE stayed at Apple for almost a decade after the death death and left the company in 2019 to help start a design business, Lovefrom.

Two years ago, Lovefrom started to work with Openai, and a year ago, IVE a co -founded IO, a startup focused on the construction of native AI devices.

Now OPENAI acquires IO as part of an agreement of $ 6.5 billion announced last week, when trying to rely on its successful design success with new AI native devices.

We do not know exactly what position 4 will take to Openai. But in a statement Signed by IVE and Altman, the couple said that Lovefrom d'Ive “will assume a deep conception and creative responsibilities through Openai”.

Openai did not immediately respond to FortuneComment request.

The IVE team in their startup IO has also apparently started working on an Ai unnamed gadget wrapped in secrets, and Altman is impressed.

“Jony recently gave me one of the prototypes of the aircraft for the first time for the first time and I was able to live with it, and I think it is the coolest play that the world has ever seen,” Altman said in a video announcing the new acquisition.

By teaming up with Openai, he can also join another dynamic duo, this time with Altman – another leader in influential technology, but 28 years of age junior.

This story was initially presented on Fortune.com