OpenAI announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Io Products, the hardware startup co-founded by legendary former Apple design chief Jony Ive, in a transaction valued at $6.5 billion. This marks OpenAI’s largest acquisition to date, reinforcing its strategic commitment to integrating advanced AI with consumer-grade hardware solutions.
Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz is serving as legal counsel to OpenAI on this significant deal. The legal team is led by partners Raaj S. Narayan and Matthew T. Carpenter, with support from a group of experienced partners including Andrew J. Nussbaum, Mark F. Veblen, T. Eiko Stange, Tijana J. Dvornic, Jeannemarie O’Brien, Ilene Knable Gotts, Emily D. Johnson, and Ian Boczko.
Counsel information for Io Products has not been disclosed at this time.
Although OpenAI did not publicly release the financial terms, the $6.5 billion valuation was confirmed in a statement from Wachtell. This acquisition surpasses OpenAI’s previous major deals, including the $3 billion purchase of the AI-assisted coding platform Windsurf and the acquisition of enterprise analytics startup Rockset.
The collaboration brings together OpenAI’s generative AI capabilities with Io Products’ expertise in hardware design and manufacturing, aiming to develop a new generation of AI-native consumer devices.
Jony Ive and his design collective, LoveFrom, will assume expanded creative roles within OpenAI following the acquisition. In a joint statement, Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called the partnership “an extraordinary moment,” stating, “Computers are now seeing, thinking, and understanding.” They described their collaboration as being rooted in “friendship, curiosity, and shared values.”
OpenAI and LoveFrom have been working together quietly over the past two years on design explorations that ultimately led to the formation of Io Products in 2024. Ive founded the company alongside longtime collaborators Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tang Tan.
The Io Products team—comprising engineers, physicists, and product developers—will now collaborate more closely with OpenAI’s research and engineering teams at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco.
Altman, in a recent post on X, referred to Ive as “the greatest designer in the world,” expressing enthusiasm about “creating a new generation of AI-powered computers.”
OpenAI already held a minority stake in Io prior to the agreement.
