Sam Altman really wants to become the next Steve Jobs. To do this, he even bought the startup of the former chief designer of Apple

But the head of OpenAI is still far from achieving visionary status: his company launches too many products

In mid-May, OpenAI announced the purchase of io, a startup founded by former Apple chief designer Jony Ive. The deal was the largest in OpenAI history. The startup team will continue to work on a mysterious device that should change the way users think about artificial intelligence. And Ive himself will oversee all design at OpenAI. After this announcement, OpenAI head Sam Altman (not for the first time) was called the new Steve Jobs. Although some journalists and experts believe that he does not deserve such a comparison.

The announcement, with the cute headline “Sam and Joni Present io,” says that Jony Ive’s design studio LoveFrom has been collaborating with the OpenAI team for two years. Last year, a separate company was created to develop a completely new consumer AI device - the startup was called io. But ultimately the parties decided to unite for greater efficiency.

According to Bloomberg, the deal is valued at nearly $6.5 billion. This is the largest acquisition in OpenAI's history. It is expected that the deal will be finalized this summer, after all necessary regulatory checks. After the merger, 55 engineers, software developers and other specialists will move to OpenAI.

Among them are the co-founders of the startup io: Evans Hankey, who previously served as Apple's chief designer, former Apple vice president of product design Tang Tan, and Scott Cannon,who led the Mac and iPad development teams. Jony Ive himself and his studio LoveFrom will remain independent, but will take over all design work at OpenAI, including the software. In particular, Altman mentioned that his first conversations with Ive were about improving the interface of the ChatGPT chatbot.

But the main project of the acquired startup is still a mysterious AI device. There is still not much information about what exactly the io team was working on before the merger (and will continue to work as part of OpenAI). The Bloomberg article notes that we are no longer talking about one device, but about a whole family of new types of devices for the approaching era of artificial general intelligence ( AGI ).

In a conversation with OpenAI employees, cited by The Wall Street Journal, Sam Altman added that the new development will be more of an addition to a laptop and phone, rather than a replacement for them, and will be able to be aware of what surrounds the user. It won't be a smartphone (and apparently won't have a screen at all), nor will it have smart glasses, because Ive is skeptical of wearable technology.

One of these wearable devices, the AI Pin brooch, was tried to be created by other former Apple employees - the founders of the Humane startup, spouses Imran Chaudhry and Bethany Bongiorno. There was another similar gadget, the Rabbit R1 voice AI assistant. However, none of the devices achieved success. “These were very bad products,” Ive noted . “They lacked expression of new ways of thinking.”

It is not yet known how long it will take to develop a new OpenAI device. According to The Wall Street Journal, Altman expects to release it by the end of this year. Although back in February he said that it would take several years to create the device, including because the company wants to create its own chip for it. At the same time, the head of OpenAI hopes to sell at least 100 million new AI devices.

Talking about the new ambitious project, Sam Altman suggested that Apple founder Steve Jobs would be “damn proud” of Ive’s latest move - that is, merging his startup with OpenAI. The designer himself compares his new tasks with working at Apple in the late 90s and early 2000s, even before the advent of the iPod and iPhone. “I believe that everything I’ve done in my career has led me to this point,” Ive shared .

Journalists did not ignore Altman's remark about Jobs. As well as a pretentious video in which new business partners compliment each other like old friends, although in fact they met only a few years ago.

OpenAI

Some saw this as an attempt by the head of OpenAI to take Jobs' place in the technology world, which has remained vacant for more than a decade. Social networks began to discuss how possible this is, and even use frame-by-frame comparisons.

However, this is not the first time this has happened. Back in November 2023, at the height of the scandal with the resignation (later revealed to be temporary ) of the head of OpenAI, The New York Times wrote : “Sam Altman has spent the last year trying on Jobs’ mantle as the Silicon Valley entrepreneur responsible for tomorrow.”

Altman's resignation as CEO also bore certain similarities to Jobs's career. In 1985, Apple's board of directors removed him from working on key projects and he was forced to leave. True, Jobs' resignation lasted much longer.

In 1985, Apple fired Steve Jobs. He returned after 12 years. In 2023, OpenAI fired Sam Altman. He returned 48 hours later.

Not everyone believes that Altman and Jobs can be compared - these are disparate figures both in scale and influence on the technological world (at least at this stage), and in personal qualities and approach to work processes. "Since Jobs' death in 2011, no one in the industry has matched his product innovation, strategy and marketing," Axios points out .

At the same time, the publication suggests that Jobs, who dedicated his life to Apple and fiercely defended it, would at least not approve of Ive’s departure from the company. Moreover, he would consider it a betrayal. As for the comparison between Altman and Jobs, it does not live up to expectations. The former head of Apple was obsessed with details and delayed the release of his products until they were fully tested and brought to perfection, recalls Axios. The head of OpenAI, on the contrary, strives to launch projects as quickly as possible in order to make the necessary changes based on user feedback.

The idea that Sam Altman = Steve Jobs looks crazy. Steve was a once-in-a-century visionary. Sam just hired Jony Ive. It's not the same thing - it's cosplay.

In November 2024, in an episode of the 20VC technology podcast, Sam Altman said that his team tries to avoid setting unrealistic goals and not chasing “fantasy dreams” by focusing on key projects. This strategy, noted Business Insider, is reminiscent of the approach of Steve Jobs, who tried to concentrate on a few of the most important products so that other, lower-priority products would not interfere and would not drag the company down.

Although Altman's words are not true: his company launches too many products, and it seems that he is only striving for Jobs' strategy, but still cannot repeat it. In February 2025, the head of OpenAI himself admitted the need to simplify the product line, since users no longer understand how one AI model differs from another.

But if Altman himself cannot yet lay claim to the role of Jobs’ heir, then his company has a much better chance of becoming the “new Apple.” “AI is quickly becoming as basic a technology as multi-touch displays were two decades ago,” Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman draws parallels. “And it's launching a new wave of devices focused on instant access to information and intuitive voice interactions.”

While Apple is at a crossroads about where to go next, its rivals Google are using AI to reimagine the way people search for information on search engines and interact with each other. And OpenAI is poaching its former employees, beginning to threaten the company not only in the technology field, but also in the field of product design. That is, where Apple had no equal for many years.

Mikhail Gerasimov