openAI buying Jony Ives company

Update: after I wrote this post I thought more about it and have realized I was thinking too small. Jony Ive doesn't partner with you just to "build a better iphone". These guys have got to be thinking bigger. Much bigger than that. Jony Ive designs the future. Pair up massive compute with some of the most advanced AI models. What do you get? A new world. They mentioned replacing "decades old legacy products". Think form factors that fit the new technology. Like Apple devices did. Think ecosystem. Think holistic AI user experience that's end to end. Think a world of autonomous devices. Think robotics, and not just the sci fi classic 2 legs 2 arms types. I know this sounds "hypyie" but they have to be thinking this big.

OpenAI spending more of that investment round. A cool ~$6.5bn to buy/merge Jony Ives startup company, so cute picture. (yeah, that Jony Ive). The announcement this past week says they've been collaborating for two years and Jony founded io a year ago which is now merged with OpenAI. more in the Atlantic and this video. Working together for two years means they're a ways along in the product development cycle as well.

Jony Ive is a legend in Silicone Valley and in tech. This is a coup for OpenAI imo, a potentially massive payday for Jony and friends and is also a big big opportunity.

imo OpenAI has a basic problem in that others control channel access (Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon etc.), so openAI has to try and break through. Otherwise OpenAI risks becoming just another model or a chat interface which will be overpowered by more integrated offerings from Google, Apple, Copilot etc. and/or replaced by the numerous competitive models available from  Anthropic, Google Gemini, Metas Llama, AWS Nova, Deepseek, etc. 

OpenAI acquiring windsurf is their play to the developer community directly. While windsurf has ~1k enterprise licenses, it's not a leader in the field. That's cursor and copilot, and don't discount google. Anthropic has the mantle of the best model for developers at the moment (which must not sit well with OpenAI either). $3bn is a lot to pay for windsurf even though the market is project to grow significantly over the next few years. But OpenAI simply can't afford to not be a player in the developer tooling market and not capture all the data and learnings (and revenue) it will generate.

Now with this merger with Steve Jobs design soulmate (Jony Ive), OpenAI signal they plan to break through to consumers, bypassing Apple and others.

This has the potential to be a big big deal if it succeeds. Think how the iphone changed mobile devices and turned Apple into a 3 trillion dollar company. Especially because the major player in high end consumer mobile devices, Apple, has really struggled integrating AI into its products. There is an opening here imo. Apple are vulnerable amidst this AI technology shift.

OpenAI merging with io is a gamble for sure. Who knows if will work out or not. It will be interesting to see what they come up with (can I get a H.A.L. anyone?). I understand Sam Altman invested in and OpenAI helped develop a personal AI hardware device, the Humane AI pin, which crashed and burned "so many things bad about it". But technology is full of stories of failures like this which provide learnings for future successes so past failure does not mean no future success.

If the OpenAI Jony Ive partnership succeeds, then boom! It could be huge. And you will be using it.




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