The deal brings together Ive, who designed Apple’s most famous products, with Altman, whose company makes ChatGPT. They want to create devices that help people use AI without relying on traditional screens and keyboards.
“We have an opportunity here to completely reimagine what it means to use a computer,” Altman said in a video announcement with Ive.
Ive and Altman began working together quietly two years ago. Their formal partnership started in 2024 when Ive created io with former Apple colleagues Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tang Tan. The team includes engineers and researchers focused on building new types of AI devices.
The first prototype already exists. Altman has one at home and calls it “the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen.” Industry insider Ming-Chi Kuo reports the device is “slightly larger than the AI Pin, with a form factor as compact and elegant as an iPod Shuffle” and can be worn around the neck.
Ive explained why new hardware is needed: “The products that we’re using to deliver and connect us to unimaginable technology, they’re decades old. Surely there’s something beyond these legacy products.”
Altman pointed out how clunky our current AI interactions are: “If I wanted to ask ChatGPT something right now, I would reach down, get on my laptop, open it up, launch a web browser, start typing… That is at the limit of what the current tool of a laptop can do.”
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The first io product is anticipated to debut in late 2026. According to Ming-Chi Kuo’s reports, mass production is expected to start in 2027, with assembly possibly occurring outside China, such as in Vietnam.
Tech experts have mixed feelings about the venture. Many point to recent AI device failures like the Humane AI Pin and Rabbit R1, which didn’t catch on with consumers despite much hype. Privacy experts worry about devices that are “fully aware of a user’s surroundings and life.”
Gartner analyst Chirag Dekate called the partnership “a decisive step to shape the user experience end-to-end” that “secures world-class design expertise and product engineering talent.”
Altman has big plans, talking about shipping “100 million AI ‘companions'” that could add $1 trillion in value to OpenAI. This puts his company in direct competition with Apple and Google, who are also adding AI features to their phones and computers.
For Ive, who created the iPhone, iPod, iPad, and MacBook during his long career at Apple, this marks a return to creating physical products. “I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this moment,” he said.
Neither company has shared exactly how these new devices will work in people’s daily lives or how much they might cost. The real test will come when the first products arrive and consumers decide if they’re worth buying.
