Io by jony ive merges with sam altman’s openAI
Jony Ive, LoveFrom studio’s co-founder together with Marc Newman, announces creating AI tools and design products under ‘io’ for Sam Altman and OpenAI. The former Apple Chief Design Officer and AI company founder discuss the upcoming products in an interview. Their collaboration pivots back to 2024. During this year, Jony Ive co-founded io, an engineering and product development company, with his former Apple designers Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tang Tan. Later on, OpenAI bought io for around 6.4 billion USD, its dubbed biggest acquisition yet. In the interview released by the AI company on May 21st, 2025, Jony Ive and Sam Altman talk about their plans for OpenAI’s io. First off, io is now its own department at OpenAI with its own team of engineers and developers.
‘io is merging with OpenAI, formed with the mission of figuring out how to create a family of devices that would let people use AI to create all sorts of wonderful things,’ the duo says. They add that they’ve already been working on a device. While it’s not yet clear what it is, Sam Altman shares that Jony Ive has already given him one of the prototypes to take home. ‘I’ve been able to live with it, and I think it is the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen,’ the OpenAI founder says. So far, their description includes having a magic intelligence in the cloud and possibly testing the ‘limit of what the current tool of a laptop can do’ in terms of how the device operates. OpenAI’s io, by Jony Ive and Sam Altman, plans to push the first series of their collaborative device in 2026.
Jony Ive’s LP12-50 for Linn | image courtesy of Linn; read more here
new technology that ‘can make us our better selves’
As the interview between Jony Ive and Sam Altman progresses, they talk more about the personal inspiration San Francisco, where they’re currently based, gives to them. The OpenAI founder then hints at him wanting to ‘democratize smart tools’, to which the io co-founder replies with ‘what I see you worrying about are other people, are about customers, about society, about culture. And to me, that tells me everything I want to know about someone.’ After that, the duo discuss creating a new generation of technology that ‘can make us our better selves.’
io by Jony Ive and Sam Altman focuses more on developing products under OpenAI. They’re developing and working with research- and engineering-based devices in San Francisco. Before co-establishing io in 2024, Jony Ive co-founded the collective LoveFrom with his friend and fellow designer, Marc Newson. He joined Apple in 1996 and left the company after two decades as the Senior Vice President of Design. During his tenure, he worked on many of the company’s classic designs, including the iPod, earlier Macbooks, iPhones, and iPads, as well as the iOS 7.
Jony Ive has also worked for Aibnb | image courtesy of Airbnb; read more here
iPhone 3Gs next to iPhone 4s | image courtesy of Zach Vega, via Wikimedia Commons
iPod 5th Generation | image courtesy of Mikepanhu, via Wikimedia Commons
Jony Ive and Sam Altman discusses OpenAi’s io in an interview
Jony Ive is the former Apple Senior Vice President of Design
the duo says they’ve already been working on their first device’s prototype
project info:
name: io
co-founder: Jony Ive
collective: LoveFrom
founder: Sam Altman
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