OpenAI recruits iPhone designer Jony Ive to work on AI hardware

Jony Ive (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

OpenAI 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 is acquiring io, a product and engineering company co-founded by Mr Ive, in a deal valued at nearly 6.5 billion dollars.

OpenAI said its CEO Sam Altman had been “quietly” collaborating since 2023 with Mr Ive and his design firm, LoveFrom.

Sam Altman, co-founder and chief executive officer, OpenAI (Kevin Wolf/AP)

Mr Ive worked at Apple for more than two decades and is known for his work on the iPhone, iMac and iPad designs.

Mr Ive was Apple’s chief design officer before leaving the company in 2019 to start his own design firm.

In a joint letter posted on OpenAI’s website on Wednesday, Mr Ive and Mr Altman said it “became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company”.

That is when Ive co-founded io with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan.

OpenAI said Mr Ive will not become an OpenAI employee and his design collective, LoveFrom, will remain independent but “will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io”.

Both OpenAI and Mr Ive’s design firm are based in San Francisco.