← Glossary Person
Jony Ive
The designer behind the iMac, iPod and iPhone, now shaping OpenAI's hardware after it bought his startup io for 6.5 billion dollars.
Jony Ive ran design at Apple for around two decades and is responsible for the look of the products that made the company what it is: the translucent iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, the unibody MacBook. He left in 2019 to start his own design firm, LoveFrom.
In 2025, OpenAI paid roughly 6.5 billion dollars for io, a hardware startup Ive co-founded, which is how a software company suddenly acquired a hardware ambition. He is now the visible face of OpenAI’s first device. His involvement is the main reason anyone expects that product to be expensive and unusual rather than another plastic speaker.
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