Jony Ive

Sir Jonathan Ive (born 1967 in London) was Apple’s design chief for over two decades, the hand behind the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch — arguably the most influential industrial designer of his generation. He left Apple in 2019 to found the independent design firm LoveFrom with Marc Newson.

From the iPhone to OpenAI

In 2024 Ive co-founded io, a secretive hardware startup dedicated to building devices for the AI era. In May 2025 OpenAI acquired io in an all-equity deal valuing it at roughly $6.5 billion — OpenAI’s largest acquisition — with Ive and LoveFrom assuming “deep design and creative responsibilities” across the company. Sam Altman called their prototype possibly “the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen,” and Ive said in the announcement video that the world sits “at the beginning of what I believe is the greatest technological revolution of our time.”

Ive frames the project as an act of repair as much as ambition. He has spoken openly about the unintended consequences of the smartphone era he helped create — telling audiences in 2025 that innovators must own outcomes they did not foresee — and has described the goal of the OpenAI hardware as technology that brings calm, delight, and less screen-bound compulsion. Reports suggest a screenless, context-aware companion device, with Ive’s team exploring a whole family of AI-native products.

Skeptics note that the device remains unreleased, that the AI-gadget category has produced high-profile flops like the Humane Ai Pin (built by other Apple alumni), and that a $6.5 billion price for a company without a shipped product is a bet on reputation. But few reputations in hardware are larger.