- Thursday, May 22, 2025
While rumors swirl around Jony Ive’s growing distance from Apple and professional collaborations raising eyebrows, his new alliance with Sam Altman at OpenAI has sparked further speculation amid ongoing chatter about the designer’s personal and professional transitions.
By: Vibhuti Pathak
OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman has made his most daring strategic move to date, acquiring Jony Ive’s secretive startup io in a stock deal valued at $6.4 billion. The acquisition, announced Wednesday (21), marks a massive bet on the future of AI-powered hardware—and a striking echo of the ambitious risk-taking style once perfected by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Ive, renowned as the visionary behind Apple’s most iconic products, including the iPhone, iPod, and iPad, co-founded io in stealth mode under the umbrella of his creative firm LoveFrom. While io has operated largely out of the spotlight, Altman’s endorsement calls it a critical piece of OpenAI’s evolving ecosystem. “Jony is the greatest designer in the world,” Altman wrote on X, sharing a nine-minute video in which he and Ive teased the future of AI-centric computing.
thrilled to be partnering with jony, imo the greatest designer in the world.
excited to try to create a new generation of AI-powered computers. pic.twitter.com/IPZBNrz1jQ
— Sam Altman (@sama) May 21, 2025
This deal, though speculative in many ways, parallels Zuckerberg’s historic acquisitions of Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus VR. Just as Zuckerberg’s $1 billion Instagram buy reshaped Facebook’s mobile strategy at a time when critics doubted its pivot from desktop, Altman’s purchase could signal OpenAI’s leap from software into full-fledged consumer hardware.
The price tag—over 2 per cent of OpenAI’s $300 billion paper valuation following a March SoftBank-led investment—demonstrates confidence and urgency. For the broader AI race, it’s a message: OpenAI isn’t just refining ChatGPT or GPT models. It’s planning to redefine the hardware that powers our digital lives.
For now, details are scarce. io’s existing collaborations under LoveFrom with companies like Ferrari and Airbnb will remain independent. But according to a joint blog post by Altman and Ive, io will now “work more intimately with the research, engineering, and product teams in San Francisco,” suggesting a deeper integration with OpenAI’s AI-first mission.
The move isn’t without risk. Zuckerberg’s Oculus bet, while ambitious, still bleeds billions under Meta’s Reality Labs. It remains to be seen whether io will become OpenAI’s WhatsApp—or its Oculus.
Nonetheless, the timing feels deliberate. With investors craving exits in a stagnant IPO market, OpenAI’s mega-deal may also serve as a strategic signal to VCs: the AI gold rush isn’t slowing down.
Altman, once the head of a nonprofit AI lab, now helms the most valuable private tech company in the U.S. His gamble on Jony Ive could cement OpenAI’s position not just as the leader in generative AI, but also as the architect of how we experience it. As Altman put it: “Excited to try to create a new generation of AI-powered computers.”
