They meet like old pals at Francis Ford Coppola's iconic Cafe Zoetrope. They sit down to record a video so slick the old director would likely be happy with it himself. The reason for all this: confirmation that Ive and Altman have been working together on a device that will reinvent how people interact with machines.
"Jony called one day and said, 'This is the best work our team has ever done.'" Altman gushes. "Jony did the iPhone Jony did the MacBook Pro. These are the defining ways people use technology. It's hard to beat those things."
But beating them is what this formidable new Silicon Valley bromance is all about. The US6.5-billion, all-stock deal for OpenAI to acquire Ive's io is a bet that the 58-year-old can repeat his greatest feat: develop an era-defining product that changes the game just as the iPhone did when it was launched in 2007. It's a bet they can do all this before Apple gets its own AI house in order. Frankly, I think it's a bet with long odds.
Altman suggested he didn't think the device would replace a smartphone, at least not at first. So, OpenAI will need first to convince users to incorporate an extra gadget into their day. Those consumers will need to be convinced it brings functionality far superior to what they can summon with the smartphone already in their pocket. If OpenAI eventually decides it wants to make a product to replace the smartphone or laptop - those "legacy" devices, as Ive put it - it will need to work out how to break iOS users from lock-in, or Windows users from the tools they need every day for work.
If it's confident it can do all that, OpenAI then needs to figure out how to manufacture it. Apple has 695 suppliers coexisting in a delicate dance that means the iPhone arrives in consumers' hands at a price they can stomach. OpenAI has no such network - nor the institutional knowledge yet to create one.
