A year after multiple publications reported Jony Ive was collaborating with Sam Altman on a hardware project, Ive himself as confirmed it in a profile in the New York Times.
There aren’t a lot of details. He met Altman through Brian Chesky, CEO of AirBNB, and the project is being funded by Ive and the Emerson Collective, Laurene Powell Jobs company. The New York Times claims it could raise $1 billion in funding by the end of the year. There was no mention of Masayoshi Son, the Softbank CEO rumored last year to have invested a $1 billion in the project.
The project only has ten employees currently, but they include Tang Tan and Evans Hankey, two key people who work with Ive on the iPhone. As for the device itself? Last year it was rumored to be inspired by touchscreen technology and the original iPhone, which makes sense given Tan and Hankey’s involvement.
There’s still no timeline on when we’re learn more about this project, but the little information dropped in the New York Times sound very familiar to anyone following the AI hardware scene in the last year.
Mr. Altman and Mr. Ive talked about how generative A.I. made it possible to create a new computing device because the technology could do more for users than traditional software since it could summarize and prioritize messages, identify and name objects like plants and eventually field complex requests like booking travel.
