Jony Ive, the iconic designer behind Apple’s iPhone, has partnered with OpenAI in a $6.5 billion deal announced on May 21, 2025, to create a new AI hardware device, aiming to redefine how humans interact with technology. This collaboration follows OpenAI’s acquisition of Ive’s startup, io Products, Inc., marking the company’s largest acquisition to date and bringing in Ive’s team of 55 engineers and researchers. TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo on Thursday provides some color on this new new AI hardware device.
My industry research indicates the following regarding the new AI hardware device from Jony Ive’s collaboration with OpenAI:
1. Mass production is expected to start in 2027.
2. Assembly and shipping will occur outside China to reduce geopolitical risks, with Vietnam currently the likely assembly location.
3. The current prototype is slightly larger than the AI Pin, with a form factor as compact and elegant as an iPod Shuffle. The design and specifications may change before mass production.
4. One of the intended use cases is wearing the device around the neck.
5. It will have cameras and microphones for environmental detection, with no display functionality.
6. It is expected to connect to smartphones and PCs, utilizing their computing and display capabilities.
In my view, one of OpenAI’s motives for announcing its collaboration with Jony Ive now is likely to shift market focus from recent Google I/O. Google’s ecosystem and AI integration, showcased in the I/O keynotes, pose a challenge that OpenAI currently struggles to address. As a result, OpenAI is leveraging a new narrative to redirect attention.
That said, AI integrated into real-world applications, often termed “physical AI,” is widely recognized as the next critical trend. While the success of the Jony Ive-OpenAI partnership remains uncertain, it clearly aligns with this trend. This partnership also recalls Alan Kay’s well-known adage: “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”
MacDailyNews Take: First thought: “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!”
The jury is definitely out on whether Jony and Sam can be the first to crack physical AI (which, by the way, we already have — with displays and far better cameras — via Grok and other lesser GenAI apps on our iPhones and iPads), but, hey, at least they’re actually doing something.
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Au revoir, Privacy. Nice know in’ ya
So this is like an Apple Watch without the benefit of a screen and health monitoring.
It’ll be like the “help! i’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” neck monitors but without life-saving functionality, just AI BS
One step closer to the man/machine morph.
Singularity is not a mere dream and it’s hardly idyllic.
Altman is a; be-at-arm’s-length human…but he’s going to be much closer in time.
Steve would have said no
slap a magnet on the back and clip it to your star trek uniform… Computer, where is Scotty?
The more I think about it, the more I believe this solidifies or validates Apple’s position.
As long as AI is a website, it’s boxed in. It can’t be an important part of people’s lives. ChatGPT is constrained by hardware gatekeepers like Apple.
The question is, can Apple become more like Open AI faster than Open AI can become more like Apple?
I think they can. Apple will win this.
Lots of companies are already replicating ChatGPT fairly well. After 20 years, nobody has replicated Apple’s hardware / software / services ecosystem.
Gee MacDailyNews. You sound like that so called journalist from way back when iPhone was first going to be released. Can’t remember his name, but he whinged and whined about how the iPhone was doomed to fail because we already had great phones available.
And look, just when there maybe another tech company do something great (and completely different from what Apple do) you’re whining about how we already have products in the market that do the job.
that was John Dvorak who claimed to be a tech analyst…. until he made that pathetic & unprophetic statement about the first iPhones.
Does anyone think this cheesier version of the Humane Pin is gonna do anything other than flop hard?
Before Apple TV. There was time whenMacDaily reported on anticipated product launches and other interesting apple developments now the reports largely consist of Tim Cooks failures, car, AI ,Siri to name a few leaked reports of products which don’t come to fruition camera on the watch etc and mostly new films and TV shows. Is it not time Tim Cook stood aside all together or became the CEO of Apple TV the only thing he appears pre occupied with before Apple loses all ground and the products become totally obsolete while most of the home grown talent leave to pursue their own start ups. Institutional investors wake up