Their alliance signaled a brazen ambition to build the next great consumer product\u2014this time for the AI age, and a bet that OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, could unseat the likes of Apple using the iPhone maker\u2019s former design star.<\/p>\n
Now, before any products have even been released, a scorched-earth lawsuit from Apple that accuses OpenAI of trade secret theft has thrown those plans into chaos, raising the stakes for the AI startup\u2014and Ive\u2014to deliver a flawless, high-profile hit device.<\/p>\n
OpenAI\u2019s device, expected to ship as early as <\/strong>next year, is still something of a mystery. A recent Bloomberg report citing anonymous sources described it as a home-speaker-like device that will serve as an active AI companion and feature moving mechanical parts designed to mimic human behavior.\u00a0<\/p>\n A source familiar with OpenAI\u2019s plans told Fortune<\/em> that the design of the initial hardware device has been finalized, while work on a broader family of AI devices proceeds.\u00a0<\/p>\n Success is hardly guaranteed. Building hardware as a company with zero track record is hard enough, and inventing an entirely new class of device for AI is a goal that has already humbled some startups and burned hundreds of millions of dollars in investors\u2019 cash.<\/p>\n For OpenAI, the move into hardware is being driven by more than just a desire to sell a hot gadget. With the 11-year-old organization <\/strong>no longer the undisputed leader in large language models, hardware represents a strategic, maybe even critical, evolution of its business\u2014a way to put its AI models in the hands of consumers and lock them in, giving them a reason to use OpenAI\u2019s models even if they aren\u2019t clearly better than rivals\u2019 and ensuring that competitors can\u2019t cut off the path to those users.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re being forced to build hardware because it gives them more control over the user experience,\u201d said Anshel Sag, a principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy who specializes in spatial computing. \u201cThe biggest challenge that OpenAI has is delivering on something that is compelling enough to get people to actually buy it.\u201d<\/p>\n Ive, of course, built his legacy at Apple on an obsessive discipline: perfectly made products, developed in tandem with Apple founder Steve Jobs. The question now is whether Ive can pull off another feat of product design magic for a different fast-moving tech company. That would <\/strong>be challenging under the best of circumstances. Apple\u2019s lawsuit threatens to derail the project.\u00a0<\/p>\n Justin Sullivan\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n In the roughly one year since OpenAI acquired Ive\u2019s io Products for $6.5 billion, the io team has been integrated into the parent company as the OpenAI hardware group. While OpenAI\u2019s leadership and the majority of its staff work out of the company\u2019s headquarters in San Francisco\u2019s Mission Bay district, the hardware team, which is now more than 400 employees, works out of the original io building in Jackson Square, a charming neighborhood of brick buildings and upscale furniture and design shops on the other side of town.<\/p>\n While Ive is not technically an OpenAI employee, he is spearheading the project, collaborating <\/strong>with the hardware team\u2014who are now full-time employees of OpenAI\u2014while also continuing to lead his standalone design firm, LoveFrom, which is providing the design services and setting the aesthetic for OpenAI\u2019s family of devices.<\/p>\n The structure means that OpenAI\u2019s hardware products are effectively being shaped by multiple teams and organizations, bringing together some of the world\u2019s top talent across fields like mechanical engineering and industrial design, but also creating risks of clashing visions and cultures, as well as challenges in overall efficiency.<\/p>\n People who have worked with Ive told Fortune<\/em> that he is charming and deeply diligent about his designs and cares greatly about his reputation and which projects carry his name. \u201cHe\u2019s that kind of designer. He will be laser-focused, so he basically hasn\u2019t got time for anything else,\u201d said Clive Grinyer, who has been friends with Ive for decades since they worked together at the design firm Tangerine in London, before Ive went to Apple. When Grinyer spoke to Ive a few weeks ago, Ive said he was \u201cvery, very busy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n At Apple, Ive had very high expectations and pushed the design studio team further than many thought was necessary at the time, recalls one former colleague who worked with Ive at both Apple and LoveFrom. But the end product was always better, they said, and Ive was very well liked, especially for shielding the group from broader internal pressures around things like cost and timelines. According to some former Apple executives, Ive\u2019s commitment to loyalty mirrored Apple\u2019s fierce corporate culture, in which defections to rivals were treated as treasonous.\u00a0<\/p>\n By some accounts, Ive and Altman have a genuine friendship. Altman has spoken about meeting Ive\u2019s family, and Ive said his son, Charlie, was the first in his family to use ChatGPT and encouraged Ive to meet Altman. To keep each other abreast of the hardware progress and other business matters, Ive, 59, will trek to OpenAI HQ, and Altman, 41, will just as often visit Ive in his locale.<\/p>\n Whether their partnership creates the same magic as Ive\u2019s <\/strong>nearly 15-year-long collaboration with Jobs remains to be seen. With OpenAI preparing for an initial public offering and locked in a fierce competition with other frontier model makers, Altman and the company\u2019s leadership have a lot of priorities competing for their attention.<\/p>\n Smith Collection\/Gado\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n OpenAI is one of several major tech companies, including Apple, Meta, and Google, racing to create the next essential tech device by fusing AI and hardware together into a new class of gadget. Such devices have yet to prove themselves with consumers, and the path is already littered with casualties: highly hyped, AI-first gadgets like the Rabbit r1 and the Humane AI Pin flopped spectacularly on arrival. The Humane device, a voice-enabled AI assistant that clipped onto a user\u2019s shirt, was created by two former Apple employees and raised $241 million in venture funding.<\/p>\n Because of limitations in mobile operating systems and cellular connectivity, tech firms are trying to crack how best to package consumer AI\u2014be it wearables, robots, or phones\u2014and how to get AI to run mostly locally rather than relying on outside connectivity.\u00a0<\/p>\n Another key challenge is privacy. Devices that record users in the home, as OpenAI\u2019s device is rumored to potentially do, are among the most risky when it comes to consumer privacy. \u201cPeople wonder if an AI device is recording them or not, and it\u2019s really uncomfortable to have to ask that question,\u201d said Elena Wagenmans, co-founder and CEO of TAYA, which makes an AI-powered necklace that does not have an \u201calways-on\u201d mode and features other built-in privacy safeguards.\u00a0<\/p>\n OpenAI\u2019s Altman has described early prototypes of the device as \u201csimple\u201d and less distracting than a smartphone. \u201cYou trust it over time, and it does have just this incredible contextual awareness of your whole life,\u201d Altman said in an on-stage interview alongside Ive in November 2025.<\/p>\n Given Altman\u2019s controversial reputation\u2014he was briefly fired in 2023 for not being \u201cconsistently candid\u201d with the company\u2019s board of directors, and a lengthy New Yorker article this year raised a litany of questions about his trustworthiness\u2014consumers may have misgivings about putting an OpenAI AI device inside their home, no matter how slick a product Ive designs.<\/p>\n \u201cA beautiful object does not solve a trust deficit,\u201d said Gary Sheng, founder of the applied-AI agency Hyperagent Labs. The performance, and usability, of OpenAI\u2019s voice technology, including the newly released GPT-Live, will also be important\u2014with consumers sensitive to the right balance of usefulness and intrusiveness.<\/p>\n Sebastian Gollnow\/picture alliance via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n Ive is said to be motivated, at least to some degree, by a desire to make amends for the negative societal side effects wrought by the smartphone, such as screen addiction and toxic social media. \u201cI think he feels some responsibility for what happened with the iPhone,\u201d said Grinyer, the longtime Ive friend. \u201cIt became a gateway to this terrible world.\u201d<\/p>\n Aside from the speaker device OpenAI is reported to be building, the company could also be eyeing a smartphone with AI agents replacing apps, industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported earlier this year. Other products rumored to be in the potential suite of devices include AI glasses and an AI pin.\u00a0<\/p>\n To build and ship a family of new devices, the Ive-OpenAI alliance will need to be hyper-focused, including assembling a manufacturing system from scratch. It\u2019s a tough task, and one that will be made all the more difficult as OpenAI fights Apple in court over the team it has assembled.<\/p>\n Apple\u2019s lawsuit alleges two former employees now working at OpenAI unlawfully took confidential data, including information about vendors and contractors in Apple\u2019s supply chain, as well as details about unreleased hardware products and technical specifications. The complaint, which claims that more than 400 former Apple employees now work at OpenAI, names Tang Tan, OpenAI\u2019s chief hardware officer and a former vice president at Apple, Chang Liu\u2014another former Apple employee now at OpenAI\u2014and io and OpenAI. Ive is not named.\u00a0<\/p>\n OpenAI said in a statement that it is not aware of any evidence that Apple\u2019s allegations have merit and that it has no interest in other companies\u2019 trade secrets. \u201cWe believe in fair competition and allowing people the freedom to work wherever they choose,\u201d the company said.<\/p>\n Saurabh Vishnubhakat, an intellectual property law professor at Cardozo School of Law, told Fortune<\/em> that the lawsuit is more likely to \u201cslow, compartmentalize, and reshape OpenAI\u2019s hardware project\u201d rather than kill it outright. \u201cThe risk is that OpenAI ends up having to quarantine files or employees, redo engineering work, abandon a manufacturing process, or replace a supplier,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Delays can be costly, particularly with so much at stake. Still, despite the breakneck pace at which large language models and agentic AI are evolving, AI devices are still in the embryonic stage and very much undefined\u2014a fact that may play to Ive\u2019s strengths.<\/p>\n Ferrari<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n At LoveFrom, Ive has sought to build a culture centered on care. The firm\u2019s name comes from a conversation with Apple\u2019s Jobs about the importance of making products thoughtfully. Its 50 to 60 employees in San Francisco often write each other thank-you notes and design small gifts for one another (a tradition carried over from Apple\u2019s design studio). The team includes designers, color specialists, and sculptors who physically build products from scratch.<\/p>\n The design firm\u2019s most notable project outside OpenAI has been designing Ferrari\u2019s Luce, the Italian automaker\u2019s first fully electric car, which drew mixed reviews when it was unveiled in May. LoveFrom began the Ferrari project with months of research, producing four thick books on topics such as \u201cspeed,\u201d before designing the vehicle.<\/p>\n Ive, who has described the design process as \u201cunpredictable,\u201d has a history of playing with different styles. Although he championed a clean, minimalist aesthetic during his time at Apple, he embraced more ornate, decorative graphics that mimic physical objects after LoveFrom took on Airbnb as a client in 2020.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better,\u201d Ive is quoted as saying in the book Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple\u2019s Greatest Products<\/em> by journalist Leander Kahney.<\/p>\n To become a hardware powerhouse, OpenAI needs Ive to do both.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Sam #Altman #Jony #Ives #hardware #dream #team #battle #OpenAIs #future<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As Jony Ive and Sam Altman hug… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":602,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[499,493,504,494,503,506,502,501,500,495,480,505,498,496,497,330],"class_list":["post-601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-altman","tag-apple","tag-battle","tag-chatgpt","tag-dream","tag-future","tag-hardware","tag-ives","tag-jony","tag-jony-ive","tag-openai","tag-openais","tag-sam","tag-sam-altman","tag-smartphones-and-mobile-devices","tag-team"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-1032298074-e1784678351656.jpg?format=webp&w=1440&q=100\"\/)
<\/div>Two hubs, one vision<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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<\/div>The race for the next device<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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<\/div>Why hardware is notoriously difficult<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Care, craft, and complexity\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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