---
title: "OpenAI and Jony Ive’s Bid to Make the Computer Disappear"
author: "Mani Sandher"
published: "2025-05-22T21:44:43.000+00:00"
modified: "2025-05-22T21:45:13.000+00:00"
source: "https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/openai-jony-ives-bid-make-computer-disappear-mani-sandher-tpzbe"
cover_image: "https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/v2/D4E12AQHqpFTucNZnSQ/article-cover_image-shrink_720_1280/B4EZb575PzHQAI-/0/1747949955906?e=2147483647&v=beta&t=YIrPJigZa4XepZKzAF6Heizvjj2VTpVloTKeuBlsXVs"
---

# OpenAI and Jony Ive’s Bid to Make the Computer Disappear

Source: [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/openai-jony-ives-bid-make-computer-disappear-mani-sandher-tpzbe](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/openai-jony-ives-bid-make-computer-disappear-mani-sandher-tpzbe)

Published: 2025-05-22T21:44:43.000+00:00

![Cover image](https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/v2/D4E12AQHqpFTucNZnSQ/article-cover_image-shrink_720_1280/B4EZb575PzHQAI-/0/1747949955906?e=2147483647&v=beta&t=YIrPJigZa4XepZKzAF6Heizvjj2VTpVloTKeuBlsXVs)

Today, OpenAI announced that it has acquired Jony Ive’s design studio for $6.4 billion and formed a new venture, “IO.” The fanfare centred on a beautifully produced nine-minute film that revealed almost nothing about the product itself—except that it promises to be the “first AI-native device.” While viewers were left without specifications, the dialogue between Sam Altman and Jony Ive was rich with hints for anyone willing to read between the lines.

Altman remarked that the team now has the chance to “completely re-imagine what it means to use a computer.” By naming the computer rather than a phone or wearable, he signalled an ambition to rethink the very category rather than iterate on an existing one. Ive spoke of creating “a family of devices,” suggesting that the debut product will anchor a broader ecosystem rather than stand alone. Altman then confessed that he has been “living with” one of the prototypes and described it as “the coolest piece of technology the world will have ever seen,” an endorsement that implies portability and day-to-day usefulness rather than a lab-bound concept.

Internal briefings, later echoed in press reports, add a few concrete constraints: the first IO device is said to be screen-free, context-aware and small enough to reside on a desk or slip into a pocket. If those details hold, the form factor is likely closer to a matchbox-sized badge or a palm-sized puck than to a phone, headset or pair of glasses. Altman’s irritation with “opening a laptop, typing a prompt, waiting” points toward a voice-first experience, perhaps supported by ambient sensors and a low-power neural processor that handles simple inference locally while deferring heavier reasoning to OpenAI’s cloud.

Taken together, the clues outline a product whose primary interface is the situation itself. Rather than forcing us to stare at another glowing rectangle, IO’s inaugural device appears designed to observe, listen and intervene only when doing so genuinely reduces friction. If it succeeds, the computer as we know it could fade into the background, replaced by an unobtrusive companion that coaches, guides and collaborates in real time.

That prospect raises exhilarating possibilities and unsettling questions in equal measure. Would we trust a screen-less AI to inhabit our pockets and desks? Could such intimacy make us more creative and productive, or merely more dependent? OpenAI and Ive are wagering that the benefits will outweigh the risks, and they have marshalled world-class industrial design and leading-edge AI to prove it. Whether IO becomes the next indispensable device or a cautionary tale will hinge on a delicate balance of utility, privacy and delight—and on whether users are ready to invite an invisible computer into the fabric of everyday life.