OpenAI is claimed to have mentioned buying the AI {hardware} startup that former Apple design lead Jony Ive is constructing with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. According to The Information, OpenAI may pay round $500 million for the fledgling firm, referred to as io Merchandise.

Ive, who left Apple in 2019 to start his own design firm called LoveFrom, confirmed that he was working with Altman on the AI hardware startup final 12 months in an interview with The New York Times. io Merchandise has raised an undisclosed quantity of funding from Laurene Powell Jobs’s Emerson Collective and others, in keeping with The Data.

The Data’s report notes that OpenAI might find yourself partnering with as a substitute of buying io Merchandise, which presently has a small staff that features former Apple designers Tang Tan and Evans Hankey. io Merchandise has reportedly been engaged on totally different ideas of AI-enabled gadgets, together with good dwelling devices. Final 12 months, The New York Occasions stated that the startup’s objective was to construct merchandise that are “less socially disruptive than the iPhone.”