Jony IVE, an former Apple executive known for designing the iPhone, joins forces with Openai, the San Francisco startup behind the popular chatgpt chatbot.
On Wednesday, Openai said that he was buying IO, a startup of AI apparatus that I act founded a year ago, for nearly $ 6.5 billion in an All-Stock agreement, the biggest acquisition in the history of Openai.
“We have the opportunity here to completely reinvent what it means to use a computer,” said Sam Altman, Managing Director of Openai, in a video With IVE on partnership.
The pair does not specify on the AI ​​devices on which they work, but Altman called it “the coolest technology that the world will have ever seen”.
The partnership shows how Openai faces some of the most powerful technological companies in the world, including Google, Apple and Meta, which also work on devices supplied by AI to shape the future of computer science.
Chirag Dekate, VP analyst at Gartner, said that the announcement reflected a “inflection point” in the technology industry, where future products and services will offer users more personalized and proactive assistance.
“This change suggests a future where technology concerns less the tools themselves and more on the intelligently orchestrated experiences they allow,” he said in an email.
Globally, generating IA expenditure should total $ 644 billion in 2025, an increase of 76.4% compared to 2024, according to a forecast By Gartner, a research and advice company based in Connecticut which focuses on technology.
The race to build portable gadgets fueled by AI and deploy more IA tools that can generate videos, text and code and help people also buy that large technological companies recruit high level talents. Earlier in May, Openai hired Fiji Simo, a former senior manager of Meta and the managing director of the Instacart grocery delivery startup, to lead the startup team team.
IVE, an American British designer, is a well -known figure in the technology industry because he has designed some of Apple's emblematic products such as the MacBook, the iPhone, the iPad and the IPOD. Joining Apple in the 1990s, IVE became Apple's design director in 2015.
He left the company in 2019 and launched Lovefrom, a collective and creative design company that worked with brands such as Openai.
Silicon Valley technological companies have been working on gadgets, including helmets and glasses for years, but they are still not as omnipresent as the smartphone.
There have also been major flops such as the AI ​​spindle of Humane, a portable assistant with a virtual voice that was criticized for various problems such as the provision of inaccurate information and overheating. In February, Humane, based in San Francisco, closed the brooch AI after being acquired by Hewlett-Packard.
But the escapes did not prevent technological companies from advancing construction glasses, brain interfaces and humanoid robots while they turn to a future beyond the smartphone.
When Google published smart glasses in 2013 that could take photos and videos, the company faced concerns about people using the device to surreptitiously record other people or read text while ignoring others.
But the gadget resurfaced for years later. This week, Google has unveiled a prototype of its smart glasses AI at its annual conference on E / O developers at Mountain View, demonstrating how people can use the device to search for information on a painting, travel and other subjects without having to type on their smartphone. The research giant is associated with the Warby Parker and Gentle Monster glasses on smart glasses.
Last year, Santa Monica, based in Santa Monica, unveiled the fifth generation of glasses, her augmented reality glasses that overlap digital objects on the physical world. The device, which was only available for developers, allowed people to play with virtual pets, to mention images with a voice command or to swing a virtual golf club.
Meta has teamed up with Ray-Ban on smart glasses that include an AI assistant who can answer questions, translate and help take a photo. It also works on a more powerful AR glasses pair that allows people to take video calls, obtain recipe recommendations and several tasks in other ways.
And Apple, which unveiled an expensive mixed reality headset known as Vision Pro in 2023, will also work on smart glasses.
In the video with Altman, Ive said that the products that people use to connect to technology are decades, so it is “just the common sense to think at least that there is something beyond these inherited products”.
“I have the feeling more and more than anything I have learned in the past 30 years led me to this place and at this time,” said IVE in the video.
