Did Sam Altman just figure out what AI's been missing? Or did he get locked into the very thinking he's spent his career avoiding?

WWDC is coming up quickly with a number of software announcements in store, but we're also looking further ahead to hardware launches like

We find out from Ive that Altman is a “rare visionary.” We hear from Altman that Ive is “the deepest thinker over anyone [he’s] ever met.” We’re told by Altman that Ive’s design firm is the “densest collection of talent that I’ve ever heard of in one place and probably has ever existed in the world.

Altman and Ive announced OpenAI’s acquisition of Ive’s io in a statement Wednesday, with the deal valued at roughly $6.5 billion after OpenAI acquired 23% of io in a partnership deal in 2024.

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

Jony Ive, who helped design products like the iPhone and iMac, worked closely with Steve Jobs for more than 10 years until the Apple co-founder's death in 2011.