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OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

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Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#691

A while back someone here on Hacker News made a pretty insightful comment that as great of a designer as Jony Ive is, a large part of his success is owed to the fact that he had an "editor" in the form of Steve Jobs. Once Jobs passed, he no longer really had an editor. It remains to be seen whether Sam Altman / OpenAI in general will be a good editor

How so? I don’t believe that Ive is going along with the purchase.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#692

Just need a way to talk to ChatGPT anytime. Microphone, speaker and permanent connection to ChatGPT. That’s all you need: io One need is being able to talk to ChatGPT in a whisper or silent voice… so you can do it in public. I don’t think that comes from them, but it will be big when it does. Much easier than brain implants! In an ear device, you need enough data of listening to the muscles and the sounds together, t…

The form factor that suggests is an AR headset. Google, Meta, and others have those. They're all flops. Too bulky.

Carmack has said that for VR/AR to get any traction, the headgear needs to come down to swim goggle size, and to go mainstream, it has to come down to eyeglass size. He's probably right. Ive would be the kind of guy to push in that direction.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#693

A while back someone here on Hacker News made a pretty insightful comment that as great of a designer as Jony Ive is, a large part of his success is owed to the fact that he had an "editor" in the form of Steve Jobs. Once Jobs passed, he no longer really had an editor. It remains to be seen whether Sam Altman / OpenAI in general will be a good editor

Exactly. Also noting what happened with Ron Johnson (Apple Stores) after he left Apple (and was not surrounded by either Jobs or others that worked at Apple:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson_(businessman)

I am wondering to what extent 'key man' insurance is needed. That's a big purchase to be riding on one man essentially (yes they are getting engineers and others but Jony seems to be the big ticket item for the purchase).

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#694
post #691

A while back someone here on Hacker News made a pretty insightful comment that as great of a designer as Jony Ive is, a large part of his success is owed to the fact that he had an "editor" in the form of Steve Jobs. Once Jobs passed, he no longer really had an editor. It remains to be seen whether Sam Altman / OpenAI in general will be a good editor

How so? I don’t believe that Ive is going along with the purchase.

No? It's not a acqui-hire? The article says "joining forces with the legendary designer to make a push into hardware."

Nobody says what kind of hardware. A wearable is the likely bet. Maybe a home robot, but that's a few years out.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This still means 1.5B were paid in cash for a company from what I understood has neither clients nor even a product. Not exactly pocket money.

It kind of is, when they were given $500B and told to make a return in 10-ish years. They have to put the capital in play where it has the largest ROI potential. They are gambling that Jony has another iPhone in him. I don't know enough about any of this to weigh in on it, but when you take investor money, you aren't supposed to sit on it or do slow burn (at least not VC money), its meant to be gasoline, and you moon…

Source? They did a $40B funding round for which Softbank is on the hook for most of it, and they are going into debt cause they don't have the cash either [0]. IMO, these acquisitions are due to the fact they know just selling the model isn't where the huge margins are, selling the verticals is.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-21/softbank-...

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#696
After thinking for sometime it seems like even though Sam doesn't have any stake in io, he might have a stake in the Thrive fund that invested in io. Put $50M in a Thrive fund, which is used to invest in io that ultimately gets acquired by OpenAI at a really high valuation. Joshua from Thrive anyways wanted Sam to have some stake and the numbers being floated around was of the order of $7B. The whole thing seems absurd and makes me trust OpenAI even less.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#697
post #557

[flagged]

Just adding to the noise, but the thing that finally got my 15+ year old account banned was reporting some blatantly racist comments. Apparently if a subreddit mod agrees with the reported comment, they can just report you for "abusing the report system". The original comment never got removed, of course.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#699
post #691

A while back someone here on Hacker News made a pretty insightful comment that as great of a designer as Jony Ive is, a large part of his success is owed to the fact that he had an "editor" in the form of Steve Jobs. Once Jobs passed, he no longer really had an editor. It remains to be seen whether Sam Altman / OpenAI in general will be a good editor

How so? I don’t believe that Ive is going along with the purchase.

OpenAI has recruited Jony Ive, the designer behind Apple’s iPhone, to lead a new hardware project for the artificial intelligence company that makes ChatGPT.

..

OpenAI said it already owns a 23% stake in io from a prior collaborative agreement signed late last year. It says it will now pay $5 billion in equity for the acquisition.

..

OpenAI said Ive will not become an OpenAI employee and LoveFrom will remain independent but “will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io.”

https://apnews.com/article/jony-ive-openai-chatgpt-52c72786e...

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#700
post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I for example, got permabanned from one of the major politics subreddits. Basically what happened was I wrote a post, and some guy responded to me with a firehose of personal insults. I called him a troll in reply, and within 30 seconds of posting said reply, I was permabanned as a first offense, without any possibility of appeal. Mods be powertrippin over there.

Being banned from a subreddit is different from a permaban from reddit that "tracks you across google accounts"

I'm guessing that person signed up with a Google account that was connected to other Google accounts, and when they tried to make a new account it was flagged as "ban evasion".
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