/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25633309/1421761326.jpg?w=1536&resize=1536,0&ssl=1 "Jony Ive confirms he is engaged on a brand new gadget with OpenAI")
World Courant
Jony Ive has confirmed that he is working with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on an AI {hardware} challenge. The affirmation got here as we speak as a part of a profile of Ive in The New York Occasions, almost a yr after the potential for a collaboration between Altman and the longtime Apple designer was first reported on.
There aren’t a number of particulars on the challenge. Ive reportedly met Altman by Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, and the enterprise is being funded by Ive and the Emerson Collective, Laurene Powell Jobs’ firm. The Occasions stories it may elevate $1 billion in funding by the top of the yr, however makes no point out of Masayoshi Son, the SoftBank CEO rumored final yr to have invested $1 billion within the challenge.
The challenge solely has 10 staff at present, however they embrace Tang Tan and Evans Hankey, two key individuals who labored with Ive on the iPhone. LoveFrom, Ive’s firm, is main the gadget’s design, based on the report. The staff is reportedly now understanding of a 32,000-square-foot workplace constructing in San Francisco, a part of a $90 million strip of actual property that Ive purchased up on a single metropolis block.
Nor for the gadget itself? The Occasions says that Ive and Altman mentioned “how generative AI made it potential to create a brand new computing gadget as a result of the expertise may do extra for customers than conventional software program” as a result of its skill to deal with sophisticated requests. Final yr it was rumored to be impressed by touchscreen expertise and the unique iPhone.
However it seems like few specifics are nailed down. LoveFrom cofounder Marc Newson informed the Occasions that the AI product — and when it will come to market — are nonetheless being found out.
