This effort follows Altman’s earlier forays into blending AI with physical products:
- He was an early investor in Humane’s AI Pin, a wearable AI assistant that ultimately flopped.
More on Humane’s AI Pin - He is co-founder of Worldcoin, a company deploying orb-shaped biometric devices to verify human identity.
More on Worldcoin’s biometric rollout
At OpenAI’s developer conference last year, Altman told Axios, “Major platform shifts usually usher in a new type of computing device. If there’s something amazing to do, we’ll do it.”
The Race Beyond Smartphones
OpenAI’s move comes as other tech giants are also racing to shape the post-smartphone future:
- Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses have introduced lightweight AI interfaces in a wearable format.
Check out Meta’s Smart Glasses - Google has demonstrated AR glasses with embedded displays.
- Apple is reportedly working on augmented-reality glasses as a long-term successor to the iPhone.
Despite early skepticism in the metaverse space, these new device formats signal a maturing vision for how AI might live beyond our screens.
What’s Next?
OpenAI says it will reveal the first results of its hardware collaboration in 2026, though it hasn’t guaranteed a product launch timeline.
