OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and former Apple designer Jony Ive are keeping the smallest details of OpenAI’s first mystery hardware under wraps, but it looks like they’ve settled on the project. In an interview with Laurene Powell Jobs on Emerson Collective 2025 Demo Daythey said they were currently working on a prototype of the device, and when asked about the time frame, Ive replied that it could arrive in “less than” two years.
Altman described the project as “simple, beautiful and fun,” adding that “There was an earlier prototype that we were very excited about, but I didn’t have any sense of, ‘I want to pick this up and bite it,’ and finally all of a sudden we got there.”
Similarly, Ive emphasized simplicity and fantasy, saying: “I love solutions that in their simplicity border on almost naivety, but I also love incredibly intelligent, sophisticated products that you want to touch and that you are not intimidated by, and that you want to use almost carefree, that you use them almost mindlessly, that they are just tools.”
Altman further commented, “I hope when people see it they’ll say, ‘That’s it!'” To which I replied, “Yes, they will.”