Experiences a couple of yr in the past mentioned that former Apple design guru Jony Ive was working to create the “iPhone of artificial intelligence” in partnership with OpenAI. This could develop into the primary first-party ChatGPT machine, with the startup rumored to be on the lookout for round $1 billion in funding to start out this endeavor.
Months later, we realized that Jony Ive had hired another former iPhone designer who had simply departed Apple, Tang Tan. I noticed it on the time as one other trace {that a} ChatGPT machine was certainly within the works.
Not one of the events concerned confirmed any of those rumors within the yr since these preliminary experiences.
Quick-forward to mid-September, and Jony Ive says the challenge is actual. His firm, LoveFrom, might be concerned with designing this mysterious new iPhone competitor. Extra curiously, Laurene Powell Jobs’s Emerson Collective is funding the startup along with Ive himself. The challenge is in search of $1 billion in funding by the top of the yr.
These experiences final yr nearly all the time featured three names concerned within the ChatGPT {hardware} challenge. Jony Ive and Sam Altman are the plain first two. The third was Masayoshi Son, the CEO of Softbank, who was reportedly prepared to speculate $1 billion. The New York Times’ profile of Ive makes no point out of Son, nonetheless. However this profile in The Occasions offers us the primary affirmation that Jony Ive and LoveFrom are concerned within the ChatGPT {hardware} challenge.
Ive apparently met Altman by the CEO of Airbnb, Brian Chesky. However particulars in regards to the precise product haven’t been revealed. LoveFrom cofounder Marc Newson mentioned the AI product and launch timeframe haven’t been determined.
There’s no query that the ChatGPT machine will compete in opposition to the iPhone, which is an AI product now that Apple created Apple Intelligence. It’ll additionally compete in opposition to Google’s Pixel telephones. The Pixel 9 is Google’s main AI hardware product. However that doesn’t essentially imply the ChatGPT product will appear like a smartphone.
Experiences say that OpenAI can be elevating a brand new funding spherical at a valuation of $100 billion. Apple could be one of many events that may put money into the startup. If that occurs, Apple might be investing in a product that may finally compete in opposition to its most essential product.
Whereas the report doesn’t share any particulars in regards to the ChatGPT gadget, it says that the product “makes use of AI to create a computing expertise that’s much less socially disruptive than the iPhone.”
I’ll level out that different corporations have already tried to provide you with AI-first {hardware}. The Humane Ai Pin, made by former Apple staff, was a large failure. The Rabbit r1 turned out to be a phone-like machine working Android, although its creators by no means made that clear at launch.
Nonetheless, these makes an attempt at creating an AI machine didn’t profit from having this specific crew of famend designers. Jony Ive’s involvement is an important one, after all.
The brand new startup, whose identify can be unknown, has ten staff on the time of this writing. Tang Tan and Evans Hankey joined Ive and Newson. Each of them labored with Ive on the iPhone whereas they have been at Apple.
LoveFrom will design the ChatGPT {hardware}. The corporate is figuring out of a 32,000-square-foot workplace constructing in San Francisco. In response to The Verge, it’s a part of a $90 million strip of actual property that Ive purchased.
Since The Occasions says the brand new startup is trying to safe $1 billion in funding by yr’s finish, we’ll seemingly be taught extra particulars about this primary ChatGPT {hardware} product quickly. That’s in all probability why Ive has confirmed the challenge, since it could have inevitably leaked.
