Jony Ive, the former chief design officer at Apple, has a new project in hand. Months ago, he met with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and they decided to collaborate on a new hardware product focused on AI. In a recent interview with The New York Times, Ive confirmed that the project is in development.
First contacts. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky was one of the first customers of LoveFrom, Ive’s new company. Specifically, LoveFrom helped redesign Airbnb’s feedback system. However, the meeting between Chesky and Ive led to another important project.
A dinner and a project. In 2023, Chesky, a close friend of OpenAI’s Altman, invited Ive and Altman for dinner. That evening, Altman discussed the potential of generative AI with Ive and suggested creating a new hardware device to make these options more accessible.
The $1 billion project. Ive and Altman had several more meetings before deciding to move forward with the project, which would be designed by LoveFrom. To fund its creation, they sought investment from firms like Emerson Collective, the company of Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs’s widow. In total, they raised $1 billion for the project. In September 2023, the Financial Times reported that SoftBank had also purportedly invested in the project.
Lots of former Apple employees. In February, Ive selected the location for the project’s offices. He also hired 10 employees, including Tang Tan, who oversaw the development of the iPhone, and Evans Hankey, who succeeded Ive as Apple’s chief design officer.
A mysterious prototype. In late June, people spotted chairs with wheels being moved between LoveFrom offices. On top of them were some cardboard boxes. Rumors suggest that these boxes contained initial designs for an AI hardware product. According to The New York Times, the device aims to “create a computing experience that is less socially disruptive than the iPhone.” This claim may be hard to believe, especially given that everything suggests that OpenAI is striving to create devices similar to those depicted in films like Her.
A highly confidential project with no set deadlines. The design project’s development is being kept completely under wraps. Marc Nelson, Ive’s partner at LoveFrom, mentioned that they’re still in the process of deciding what type of product they’ll be designing and when they’ll release it to the market.
No successful attempts so far. Most details are still unknown for a project that undoubtedly faces an almost impossible challenge: to make us forget (at least to some extent) about our smartphones. Previous attempts such as the Humane AI Pin and the Rabbit R1, which created significant hype, have demonstrated the immense difficulty of achieving this goal.
Image | Apple | Village Global
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