Back in May, OpenAI acquired Jony Ive’s startup io (yes that’s really how it’s spelled), part of his LoveFrom creative design company. io was working on a secretive hardware product, and now a new rumor tells us what it is.
A pen. Obviously, this will be no ordinary pen. A past report described it as “contextually aware”, and io is now part of OpenAI, so this will definitely be an AI pen. What will it do? Your guess is as good as ours.
Interestingly, this will be just the first hardware product from OpenAI, but the company is working on two more, of which one is said to be a “to-go” audio device.
Unfortunately, these are all the details about the products themselves. Hopefully more leaks will come soon. The pen is supposedly going to be manufactured by Foxconn, most likely in Vietnam. The company initially selected for manufacturing was Luxshare, but OpenAI doesn’t want its hardware to be made in China, hence the likely change. Apparently there’s even a small chance it will be made in the USA by Foxconn.
io cost OpenAI $6.5 billion, but not really – it was an all-stock deal, so no money actually changed hands. These hardware products are going to be billed as “third-core”, meant to complement your laptop and smartphone. Others have tried and failed to add such third devices to our lives in the past, including most recently with AI “pins”, so whether OpenAI will succeed really isn’t a given. We’ll let you know when we find out more.
