Likely no coincidence that they announce their company, io, during Google I/O. Search "io" on Google right now and see what comes up...
I'm pretty sure this was named years ago
I'm more referring to launch timing
OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive
151–160 of 1001 posts
Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
VCs don’t have a ton of capital on hand right now, interest rates are high, investments are way down
Broadly, you're right, but again, there is an incredible amount of inequality at the moment, so while 90% of VCs might be strapped for cash, ther other 10% have so much that they are struggling to find worthy investment vehicles that can grow their money-pile.
Its a dillema they are in because nothing can justify the volume of investment enough without a sufficiant potential for growth, so any venture that even hints at big enough return, will find itself flush with cash it wont realistically know what to do with.
Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facebook is a great example of doing this and it succeeding very well. Zuck recognized that Facebook was going to zero and bought WhatsApp, Instagram, and Oculus. My guess is that sama sees the writing on the wall and knows that he must expand OpenAI in a similar way. What happens to OpenAI competitors that can't make similar moves is another question.
Let's ignore the 46 billion dollars wasted on the metaverse: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/meta-platforms-has-spent-$46...
Meta haven't abandoned the metaverse, and made it very clear from the beginning that "the metaverse" was something that does not exist, and will not exist in any form until the end of the decade. They continuously reiterate this during earnings calls, while increasing their capital expenditures on it.
You cannot determine it's a waste if the effort isn't completed, and if you have no insight into their progress.
Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive
#154This 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.
Facebook is a great example of doing this and it succeeding very well. Zuck recognized that Facebook was going to zero and bought WhatsApp, Instagram, and Oculus. My guess is that sama sees the writing on the wall and knows that he must expand OpenAI in a similar way. What happens to OpenAI competitors that can't make similar moves is another question.
Windsurf is not Instagram. Jony Ive's company is not WhatsApp. There are no meaningful network effects or lock in with these AI products.
Ive's company is going to make some forgettable, overpriced, and easily cloned wearable pendant or something equally irrelevant. Windsurf (and Cursor) will quickly fade into irrelevance as IDEs are once again commoditized by open source.
Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive
#155The comments on this article are very interesting. The next major device will definitely be AI-first. Apple is currently trying to jerry-rig AI into their existing product, the iPhone. This has so far not only been a complete failure, but is bound to be a complete failure in the end. The next Apple will be the one that creates an AI-first device entirely from scratch. AI lies at the core of everything it does. It's a…
The reason why Apple has failed to integrate AI successfully into the iPhone isn't because we need an AI-first device, it's because AI is still universally being strategized as a solution in search of a problem. An AI-first device at this stage will fail for the same reason: it doesn't have a mission statement to solve particular problems for real people, it has a mission statement to be an AI device. The absolute be…
No. The AI pane of glass is the next killer product.
The next major device won't be an ad funnel though. It'll give users first class access to the whole pane of glass. Not a managed ads experience at the will of some monopoly platform, but something where the AI serves us instead of being extractive.
The minute we have a broker or agent between us and the "user is the product" services that try to advertise to us and steal our time, it's game over for the old model of revenue. Google, ads, all of it will vanish. There won't be any more selling to me or the rest of the world ever again. You'll have to pay us to get our eyeballs.
Let me clarify: if we have a pane of glass where we run our own agent with our own best interests in mind, then nobody can get through that layer without it being permitted by us.
No more ads.
No more stealthy product placement.
No more paid or featured listings.
It goes further.
No more rage bait, attention bait, low information filler. The annoying people in life and in social media disappear to the great filter.
AI agents can clean up the shitty place the Internet has become.
AI agents are personal butlers. Or internet condoms.
The way that works is this: on-device AI that can handle the task of routing and dispatching and filtering, which can then dispatch out to expensive cloud AI that would otherwise try to inject adds into the stream.
Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The next major device will definitely be AI-first. Be more specific though: what form factor will such a device be in? A coffee maker? A phone? Glasses? Cars? A building? The AI wave seems to be hoping a whole load of hardware revolutions, such as holographic displays, will just appear out of the ether because it fits with their vision of how things should be.
Probably glasses or airpods.
If Apple has an opening for an AI-first device, its AirPods with their own Apple Watch style SIP and data connection + replacing Siri with a real multimodal model.
Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive
#157From April: https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/07/openai-reportedly-mulls-bu... > OpenAI is said to have discussed acquiring the AI hardware startup that former Apple design lead Jony Ive is building with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. According to The Information, OpenAI could pay around $500 million for the fledgling company, called io Products. How the heck did the price go up 13x?
Because it sounds like the CEO of OpenAI wants to use investor's money to buy his other company. Too bad we can't short it or otherwise stop it, because investment for the things we could start will dry up once the world figures this out. We're all correlated to companies like FTX whether we like them or not...
There should be a way to reverse valuate a company based on how much of its stock it used to acquire a company worth (500,000,000 dollars of) peanuts
Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No question that Ive is a legend Not sure why he deserves to be a legend, to be honest, but yes, he is a legend. He did a good job, but those small and minimalistic designs were only possible because of the efforts of entire teams of engineers, of which the public never heard anything.
And many of those designs were made at Ive's behest, against the wishes of entire teams of engineers. I feel like we have his "courage" to blame for the Butterfly keyboard, terrible Mac thermals and the lack of ports on "Pro" computers.
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Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive
#159The comments on this article are very interesting. The next major device will definitely be AI-first. Apple is currently trying to jerry-rig AI into their existing product, the iPhone. This has so far not only been a complete failure, but is bound to be a complete failure in the end. The next Apple will be the one that creates an AI-first device entirely from scratch. AI lies at the core of everything it does. It's a…
> The next major device will definitely be AI-first. Be more specific though: what form factor will such a device be in? A coffee maker? A phone? Glasses? Cars? A building? The AI wave seems to be hoping a whole load of hardware revolutions, such as holographic displays, will just appear out of the ether because it fits with their vision of how things should be.
I don't know! But Sam Altman seems to think Jony Ive does. If I did, I would be getting $6.5 billion in stock from OpenAI!
Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive
#160Sometimes two collaborators make each other better than either are alone. I get the sense that's how Steve Jobs and Jony Ive were. I've not seen anything Ive has done since be as good as what he did before. Someone has to hold the spike so the other one can swing the hammer. My guess is that's not how this relationship with Altman will work. And that picture is terrifying, please take it down and destroy the camera t…
The headline then is "Sam Altman pays Johnny Ive $6.6Bn to become his Collaborator". Not a bad idea really IMHO.