The Coming Culture Clash for Jony Ive’s Io and OpenAI

OpenAI’s been on a shopping spree.

First, a $3 billion bid for Windsurf, the maker of a popular AI coding assistant formerly known as Codeium. And now, a whopping $6.5 billion acquisition of io, the AI device startup OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and former Apple design chief Jony Ive have been working on for a couple of years.

That second deal shouldn’t have come as a surprise to our readers, given that we scooped the deal talks over a month ago, but the price tag even gave us sticker shock. Proponents of the deal might argue that paying 2% of your market cap is a small price to pay to enter what may end up being a huge market, though.

Price aside, however, we think there’s a bigger obstacle that io and OpenAI will soon face as they look to build new types of personal AI devices: a culture clash.

Ive’s 55-person startup is dominated by veterans of Apple, maker of the iPhone, which has been known for being a perfectionist when it comes to hardware design, trying countless ideas and taking as much time as it needs before settling on a final decision. Indeed in the past, io employees complained that the company had been moving too slowly when it came to coming up with and finalizing ideas for devices, according to a person who had spoken to them.