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Last month, OpenAI announced it was officially getting into the hardware business. In a video posted to X, CEO Sam Altman and former Apple designer Jony Ive, who worked on flagship products like the iPhone, revealed a partnership to create the next generation of AI-enabled devices via a startup called io.
But that launch appears to have hit a snag.
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On Tuesday, evidence of the partnership was scrubbed from the internet (except for the above video, for now). OpenAI has updated its original announcement page, stating that it is “temporarily down due to a court order following a trademark complaint from iyO about our use of the name ‘io.’ We don’t agree with the complaint and are reviewing our options.”
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET’s parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
iyO sues OpenAI
The initiator of the complaint, iyO, is the maker of AI-powered wearables, specifically iyO One, a set of earbuds that the company website says are meant to be a “computer without a screen.” iyO One can run apps the way a smartphone does and take natural language commands from the user. Bloomberg Law reported that iyO has sued OpenAI over the trademark.
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Founded by Ive, io is (or was) an under-the-radar startup focused on AI devices. On acquiring the startup in a nearly $6.5 billion all-stock deal, Sam Altman said he envisions creating a daily AI companion device as common as a laptop or smartphone. As part of the deal, Ive and those at his design firm, LoveFrom, are slated to remain independent but will take on creative roles at OpenAI.
The deal is still on
In a post on X, Mark Gurman said the deal is still on despite the hiccup.
The Jony Ive and OpenAI deal is on track and has NOT dissolved or anything of the sort, I’m told. Here’s what happened: they were sued over the name IO and there was a restraining order issued by the judge. They had to pull all materials with the name. https://t.co/JfAxPXrC5R
— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) June 22, 2025
“The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower, and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering, and product teams in San Francisco,” OpenAI wrote in the now-down blog post about the merger. The post did not offer many more details, but Altman and Ive appear focused on making the user experience of products like ChatGPT more seamless and intuitive than accessing them through traditional internet and technological interfaces.
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“I want this to be democratized, I want everyone to have it,” Altman said in the launch video, referring to the hardware OpenAI aims to build under the new partnership. Earlier in May, OpenAI moved to become a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), announcing the shift with similar language about making AI accessible to as many people as possible and focused on social betterment goals. Historically, technology of that caliber takes a while to become truly accessible and intuitive for large groups of people to use, and current AI devices like the iPhone 16 require specific, expensive hardware to run.
Emphasizing how scientists use OpenAI models to accelerate breakthroughs, Altman added in the video that he hopes forthcoming AI hardware opens up an “embarrassment of riches of what people go create for collective society.”
OpenAI’s interest in hardware
The merger follows several hints from earlier this year signaling OpenAI’s interest in hardware like wearables and robotics. With most major hardware providers launching AI-powered smartphones (despite a few drawbacks), laptops, and other tech, the space is moving quickly. On the more experimental end of that spectrum, AI devices like Humane Pin and Rabbit R1 haven’t exactly succeeded, though health wearables that make use of AI for big-picture insights are taking off.
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It’s unclear what hardware category OpenAI will target first. The video notes that the two companies won’t release anything until likely next year, though Altman vaguely mentions a prototype of an initial product in the video that he says is “the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen.” It’s unclear how significantly this lawsuit will impact any launch timelines.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Altman and Ive have discussed camera devices and headphones as possible products, but nothing is confirmed yet. In a leaked recording, Altman told employees on Wednesday that he and Ive plan to ship 100 million AI “companions” that would be part of a user’s everyday life and aware of their surroundings, small enough for a pocket or desk, and as essential as a laptop and smartphone.
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