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This is a sign of OpenAI's weakness. Altman is desperately trying to use OpenAI's inflated valuation to buy some kind of advantage. Which is why he's buying ads, paying $6.5 billion in stock to Jony Ive, and $3 billion for a VSCode fork created in a few months. Almost anything makes sense when you see your valuation going to zero unless you can figure something out.
That is an insane amount to hire Johnny Ive. Just to signal to the market that OpenAI is getting into hardware, what on earth could they be building towards. They’ve been writing some big checks off late, these costs will have to be justified soon enough.
VCs have too much capital at hand and don't know how to deploy it all. This is on the back of epic wealth inequality. I don't know why Jony Ive is seen to be worth billions, but he's obviously not, he's just another shill in the ivory tower.
Agreed. If it was the only option it would have been worth it to Apple to pay him billions to _leave_. His last 5-10 years at Apple were marked by him ruining a number of products.
I had been considering doing a startup in this space, I thought Humane and rabbit are directionally correct. This kinda makes me want to do it even more, that would be a fun team to compete against.
This is a sign of OpenAI's weakness. Altman is desperately trying to use OpenAI's inflated valuation to buy some kind of advantage. Which is why he's buying ads, paying $6.5 billion in stock to Jony Ive, and $3 billion for a VSCode fork created in a few months. Almost anything makes sense when you see your valuation going to zero unless you can figure something out.
If it was close at hand, spending precious resources on anything other than pursuing AGI wouldn’t make sense.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But Meta is thriving with Meta Ray Bans, they have sold over 2M as of few months back. (Yes I know that number seems small compared to other devices, but for a new form factor, that seems like a great early success)
Where is they AR/VR part in the Ray Bans? It’s cameras, speakers, microphones but no display.
I saw a presentation within the last year showcasing AR emoji-like things. Not that emojis are a killer feature, but the tech is there.
No question that Ive is a legend, but I do think the fall of Humane (also ex-Apple) and the challenges at Meta, Apple, and Google in terms of VR/AR adoption (Meta Ray Ban, Apple Vision, Google Glasses and the new thing) are instructive here. The $6.5B almost feels like the largest ever aquihire.
To quote from the article regarding Humane and the Rabbit r1 personal assistant device: “Those were very poor products,” said Ive, 58. “There has been an absence of new ways of thinking expressed in products.”