OpenAI Acquires Jony Ive's Startup in $6.5 Billion Deal To Create AI Devices (nytimes.com) 20
Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief executive, said Wednesday his firm was paying $6.5 billion to buy io, a one-year-old start-up created by Jony Ive, a former top Apple executive who designed the iPhone. From a report: The deal, which effectively unites Silicon Valley royalty, is intended to usher in what the two men call "a new family of products" for the age of artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., which is shorthand for a future technology that achieves human-level intelligence.
The deal, which is OpenAI's biggest acquisition, will bring in Mr. Ive and his team of roughly 55 engineers, designers and researchers. They will assume creative and design responsibilities across OpenAI and build hardware that helps people better interact with the technology. In a joint interview, Mr. Ive and Mr. Altman declined to say what such devices could look like and how they might work, but they said they hoped to share details next year. Mr. Ive, 58, framed the ambitions as galactic, with the aim of creating "amazing products that elevate humanity."
The deal, which is OpenAI's biggest acquisition, will bring in Mr. Ive and his team of roughly 55 engineers, designers and researchers. They will assume creative and design responsibilities across OpenAI and build hardware that helps people better interact with the technology. In a joint interview, Mr. Ive and Mr. Altman declined to say what such devices could look like and how they might work, but they said they hoped to share details next year. Mr. Ive, 58, framed the ambitions as galactic, with the aim of creating "amazing products that elevate humanity."
Colour me skeptical (Score:5, Insightful)
Ive is past his prime and Altman is a snake oil salesman.
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Jony Has Become a Tech God (Score:5, Insightful)
Jony Ives founds a start-up and a year later it is worth $6.5 billion? This reminds me of Mad Sweeney in American Gods who can pull gold coins out of thin air.
When you become a player in Big Tech you are promoted to a god-like status where anything you do, even failure, is rewarded with hundreds of millions, billions, of dollars.
I am reminded of Marissa Mayer hired by Yahoo who did little good for that company but was paid $260 million, but the key thing here is how she handed out billions of dollars to her friends from Google who had concocted start-ups, which added no value to Yahoo when acquired, often failing quickly under her helm. It looked exactly like what it was, passing investors money out to friends in huge chunks because she could.
It is ubiquitous. Once you achieve a certain level of notoriety money showers you from thin air.
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Yup, and the company has yet to actually produce anything. They're buying the idea that Ives will eventually make something.
They did the same with Woz. He announced he was going to start a new company. Hadn't even decided what the company would do and yet investors poured in and the company became worth hundreds of millions. In the end, it never materialized.
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It just tells you that Silicon Valley is not about merit.
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Recall when it was a rule of thumb that your startup could be quickly valued at $1million/engineer? (dot com boom, 2001 approx)
So Jony's 1 year old company commands about $118 million per employee in this deal.
I read the article, it's an all stock deal. Hmmm.. you would want a nice stock/options package, that allows you to cash out soon. But I imagine everyone on the team has drunk the Kool Aid.
"Galactic Ambitions". Soooo... a robot army?
Also, Jony Ives, the supposed designer of the
Imagine paying $6,500,000,000 for nothing (Score:2)
This is truly the dotcom boom 2.0
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This is truly the dotcom boom 2.0
This is worse than the dotcom bust. Back then, startups were proposing ideas, most of which didn't pan out. In this case, there are no ideas, just the reputation of someone who led the team that designed the outside look of a game-changing product 20 years ago.
Must be nice (Score:1)
Must be nice to be "in the club" and get $6.5B for basically nothing.
Seems stupid money is still plentiful (Score:3)
Nobody smart is investing into LLM crap.
Jony Ive (Score:3)
Is an overzealous hack who creates garbage. He has never created any "amazing products that elevate humanity" and he never will. His designs aren't that good and his startup hasn't created anything even moderately useful.
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His designs were good; sometimes. But like MOST his design work, it's grossly over valued by yuppies; so it is fitting they payed way too much for him.
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Is an overzealous hack who creates garbage. He has never created any "amazing products that elevate humanity" and he never will. His designs aren't that good and his startup hasn't created anything even moderately useful.
I remember a time where you and everyone you ever cared about would be modded into oblivion for daring to even think such an opinion... The reality distortion field has well and truly shattered.
I agree for the most part, he wasn't that good now he's essentially trading on past glories going from scam to scam.
Oh and Apple is now... passe.
form over function (Score:3)
I think OpenAI and Ive fit together in a "form over function" kind of way. Perfect match to create "looks slick and promising but continually disappoints".
Ludicrous (Score:2)
"...is intended to usher in what the two men call "a new family of products"..."
Which will all be abject failures. Altman is a con man and Ive a fraud who steals from others. Royalty indeed.
Definitely the kind of thing you see from a non-profit established for the benefit of mankind.
$6.5B?? (Score:2)
How they look like? (Score:2)
I don't know either - but I know one thing: they'll be very, very thin and without buttons.
Something doesn't smell quite right (Score:1)
That's a lot of money for a company without much achieved. Is this just a money transfer between elites? Who are the present owners of IO??
Other people's money (Score:2)