Searching for a new cell phone with artificial intelligence technology

Since founding OpenAI in 2015, Sam Altman has spent many days thinking that the company’s generative AI products needed a new kind of hardware to succeed. Since leaving Apple in 2019, Jony Ive, the designer behind the iPhone, iPod, and MacBook Air, has been thinking about what the next big computing device could be.

Both men and their companies collaborated to develop a device that could be the successor to the smartphone and would offer the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) in a new form, without the constraints of the rectangular screen that has been dominant computing. The tool of the last decade, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

The project is at an early stage, these people say, but Altman and Ive have developed some initial concepts and secured up to $1 billion in financing from SoftBank, the Japanese technology investor led by Masayoshi Son. With SoftBank’s backing, the two men were able to tap into the semiconductor expertise of ARM, the British chip design company that Son bought in 2016 and which recently went public.

The commercial structure of the project has not yet been revealed. Altman’s company, OpenAI, is an artificial intelligence research lab in San Francisco with roughly 400 researchers, engineers, and support staff, while Ive’s San Francisco design firm, LoveFrom, consists of about three dozen industrial and software designers, plus some engineers. .

Many industry executives believe the technology has the potential to introduce a new paradigm in computing that they call “ambient computing.” Instead of typing on smartphones and taking photos, they imagine a device in the form of something as simple as a necklace or glasses that can process the world in real time, using a sophisticated virtual assistant capable of answering questions and processing images.

Altman had already invested in Humane, a company founded by Imran Choudhury and Bethany Bongiorno, former Apple employees, who plan to launch their devices, in What they call the “disappearing computer”“, later this year.

One reason Altman may be determined to develop his own device is to prevent OpenAI from relying on Apple or Google’s Android for distribution. Relying on other platforms represents a challenge for technology giants, such as Facebook and Amazon, because Apple and Google obtain a share of sales through their platforms. Apple has also introduced privacy restrictions, which has reduced ad sales.

However, the path towards creating new devices hardware It is full of failures. Amazon and Facebook tried to develop their own smartphones, but abandoned those efforts after they failed to attract interest.

Few in Silicon Valley have a better track record in hardware development than Eve. He was the driving force behind the development of the company’s Apple Watch, the only major new device the company has introduced since Steve Jobs’ death in 2011. In 2019, I left the company to found LoveFrom, but signed a multi-year contract. To continue working with Apple.

Last year, Eve and Apple agreed to stop working together. While negotiating the end of their business relationship, Apple and I agreed that there would be no restrictions on the products it could develop in the future, according to two people familiar with the matter.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

Tripp Michael He reports on Apple and Silicon Valley for The Times and is based in San Francisco. His focus on Apple includes product launches, manufacturing issues, and political challenges. He also writes about trends in the technology industry, including layoffs, generative artificial intelligence, and robotaxis. More from Tripp Mickle

Tripp Michael He reports on Apple and Silicon Valley for The Times and is based in San Francisco. His work at Apple focuses on product launches, manufacturing issues, and policy challenges. He also writes about some of the trends in the technology industry such as layoffs, generative artificial intelligence, and robot taxis. More from Tripp Mickle

Kid Metz He is a technology reporter and author Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World. It covers artificial intelligence, self-driving cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging fields. More Kid Metz