What Sam Altman told OpenAI about the secret device he’s making with Jony Ive
The idea is a “chance to do the biggest thing we’ve ever done as a company here,” Altman told OpenAI employees Wednesday.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman gave his staff a preview Wednesday of the devices he is developing to build with former Apple designer Jony Ive, laying out plans to ship 100 million AI “companions" that he hopes will become a part of everyday life.
Altman told employees that they had “the chance to do the biggest thing we’ve ever done as a company here," he said after announcing OpenAI’s plans to purchase Ive’s startup, named io, and give him an expansive creative and design role. He suggested the $6.5 billion acquisition has the potential to add $1 trillion in value to OpenAI, according to a recording reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
In the meeting, Ive noted how closely he worked with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs before his passing in 2011. With Altman, “the way that we clicked, and the way that we’ve been able to work together, has been profound for me."
Altman and Ive offered a few hints at the secret project they have been working on. The product will be capable of being fully aware of a user’s surroundings and life, will be unobtrusive, able to rest in one’s pocket or on one’s desk, and would be a third core device a person would put on their desk after a MacBook Pro and an iPhone.
The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that the device won’t be a phone, and that Ive and Altman’s intent is to help wean users off of screens. Altman said the device also isn’t a pair of glasses, and that Ive had been skeptical about building something to wear on the body.
Ive referenced “a new design movement." Altman said it would amount to a “family of devices," bringing up his fondness for how Apple has long integrated its hardware and software offerings.
Altman told OpenAI staff that stealth will be important for their ultimate success to avoid competitors copying the product before it’s ready.
For months, Ive’s team has been speaking with vendors who will be able to ship the device at scale. “We’re not going to ship 100 million devices literally on day one," Altman said, predicting that OpenAI would ship that large quantity of high-quality devices “faster than any company has ever shipped 100 million of something new before." Altman said the goal is to release a device by late next year.
The grandiose plans echo Altman’s bold vision for OpenAI’s expansion in many spheres, including for data centers costing hundreds of billions of dollars, enterprise technology, chatbots, personal robots and beyond.
Rolling out new devices, especially ones that will compete with deep-pocketed, multitrillion-dollar companies like Apple or Google, has long been among the most difficult of challenges in the tech industry. Humane, another startup made up of former Apple executives that Altman invested in, sold an “Ai Pin" that failed to catch on with consumers.
And OpenAI is already bleeding cash. The startup told investors last fall it won’t generate a profit until 2029, and it expects to lose $44 billion before doing so, the Journal has reported.
While Apple and Google have struggled to keep pace with AI innovations, many investors see the two companies—whose software runs nearly all the world’s smartphones—as the primary means through which billions of people will access AI tools and chatbots. Building a device is the only way OpenAI and other artificial-intelligence companies will be able to interact with consumers directly.
Altman and Ive also offered details about how their collaboration grew in the last several years. Eighteen months ago, OpenAI’s Vice President of Product Peter Welinder began working with Ive’s team. The two sides became excited about a specific device last fall.
The original plan was for Ive’s startup to build and sell its own device using OpenAI’s technology, but Altman said he eventually realized that wouldn’t work. Altman said he knew the two companies would have to be combined because the device wasn’t just an accessory but a central facet of the user relationship with OpenAI.
“We both got excited about the idea that, if you subscribed to ChatGPT, we should just mail you new computers, and you should use those," Altman said.
Altman said he and Ive came to believe that existing devices wouldn’t work. While ChatGPT changed people’s expectations about the power of technology, it is still being used in an old paradigm: holding a laptop, launching a website, and typing something in and waiting.
“It is not the sci-fi dream of what AI could do to enable you in all the ways that I think the models are capable of," Altman said.
Write to Berber Jin at berber.jin@wsj.com
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