The creator of the iPhone has teamed up with the company behind ChatGPT to build new hardware.
Former Apple design boss Jony Ive – responsible for the design of the iMac and iPad as well as the iPhone – will look to build new products that integrate artificial intelligence and represent a new generation of technology, the pair suggested.
ChatGPT creator OpenAI will buy io, a product and engineering company co-founded by Mr Ive, in a deal valued at nearly $6.5 billion.
OpenAI said its CEO Sam Altman had been "quietly" collaborating since 2023 with Mr Ive and his design firm, LoveFrom.
Mr Ive worked at Apple for more than two decades and is known for his work on the iPhone, iMac and iPad designs.
Mr Ive was Apple's chief design officer before leaving the company in 2019 to start his own design firm.
In a joint letter posted on OpenAI's website on Wednesday, Mr Ive and Mr Altman said it "became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company".
That is when Ive co-founded io with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan.
OpenAI said Mr Ive will not become an OpenAI employee and his design collective, LoveFrom, will remain independent but "will assume deep design and creativeresponsibilities across OpenAI and io".
Both OpenAI and Mr Ive's design firm are based in San Francisco.
Additional reporting by agencies
