Openai said Wednesday it is buying Jony Ive's AI Devices startup IO to acquire an all-share agreement for about $6.4 billion, including its current stake in the company.

I am taking on “deep creative and design responsibilities in Openai and IO”, Openai said in a statement. The company said IO is merging with Openai, while Ive and his "creative collective" called Lovefrom will remain independent.

The two said in a blog post on Wednesday by Openai CEO Sam Altman and Ive that IO was founded by IO along with Apple alumni Scott Cannon, Tang Tan and Evans Hankey, who briefly took over Ive's role in Apple after leaving.

"The IO team, focused on developing inspiring, authorized and enabled products, will now merge with Openai to work more closely with San Francisco's research, engineering and product teams," the post said.

The purchase is by far the largest Openai, and the company agreed to buy the AI-assisted coding tool Windsurf for $3 billion. Prior to this, OpenAI acquired Analytics Database Company Rockset in 2024 at an undisclosed sum.

I announced in 2019 that he was leaving Apple, and he was the long-time chief design officer, and started Love. The New York Times reported last year that Lovefrom customers paid the company up to $200 million a year, and that designers were working on projects for projects at Christie's, Airbnb and Ferrarri.

Airbnb said in 2020 that IVE is consulting companies for recruitment and future products.

I'm responsible for designing appleThe most iconic products include iPod, iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air. He also helped design Apple's new Cupertino headquarters, called Apple Park, which began in 2004 and officially opened its campus in 2019.

The acquisition is news as Openai’s recent $300 billion in a funding round led by SoftBank, eager to stay ahead of the Generative AI race, where competitors including Google, Anthropic and Elon Musk’s Xai are investing heavily and launching new products regularly. Part of maintaining a lead in that game included strengthening its hardware operations.

To promote its hardware ambitions, Openai hired a former head of Meta Orion in November to augment the reality glasses program to lead its robotics and consumer hardware efforts. Caitlin "CK" Kalinowski wrote in an announcement that the time said: "The character will initially focus on Openai's robotics work and partnerships to help bring AI into the physical world and unlock it for the benefit of humanity."

Also in the second half of last year, Openai invested in physical intelligence from a San Francisco-based robotics startup that raised $400 million and raised $2.4 billion in currency valuation. Other investors include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Prosperity Capital, Lux Capital and Bond Capital.

The startup’s focus is “to bring general AI into the physical world”, according to its website, which aims to power robots by developing large AI models and algorithms.

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