There were rumors last year that a collaboration was brewing between former Apple designer Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, but until now both have kept mum. However, in a profile in The New York Times published this weekend, Ive confirmed that his company LoveFrom is leading the design of an AI product being created in collaboration with Altman.
Also involved are Tang Tan and Evans Hankey, both of whom have held big design roles at Apple. So far, a team of about 10 employees is attached to the project, according to the Times, which is located in an office building in San Francisco, one of several properties Ive has purchased in a single city block.
But we still don’t know much about the product they’re working on. The report describes a wheelchair among LoveFrom assets by Tan and Hankey, which were “stuffed with papers and cardboard boxes containing early ideas for a product that uses AI to create a computing experience that is less socially disruptive than the iPhone.”
Since leaving Apple in 2019 to start LoveFrom, the design firm has worked on typefaces and even a red clown nose, but we haven’t seen much in terms of hardware – just a $60,000 turntable. While the AI product appears to be on the horizon, there is currently no timeline for when it will launch.
OpenAI, in partnership with SoftBank, will build and open up $500 billion worth of AI infrastructure in the United States over the next four years. The two entities have teamed up to establish a new company called Stargate Project to build an AI data center for the ChatGPT maker, and according to their announcement, it will “secure US leadership in AI” as well as “create hundreds of thousands of American jobs.” SoftBank will fund the project, while OpenAI will be in charge of its operations. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son will serve as its chairman.
While OpenAI and SoftBank will serve as the Stargate Project’s major partners, the initiative also involves several other companies. In addition to OpenAI, Arm, NVIDIA, Oracle, and of course, Microsoft will be its major initial technology partners. The company’s official announcement states that OpenAI, NVIDIA, and Oracle will work together to “build and operate this computing system,” though it did not specify what that means.
As for Microsoft, the company has posted an announcement about its involvement in the project and said it will continue its “strategic partnership” with OpenAI. Microsoft will still have the right to use OpenAI IP on its products, and the OpenAI API will still run exclusively on Azure. However, it will no longer be OpenAI’s exclusive provider of computing capacity. Microsoft will have a “right of first refusal” whenever OpenAI requires additional capacity as its needs grow, meaning the ChatGPT-maker will have to check with it first before working with other parties.
The Stargate project is immediately releasing $100 billion for its first data center buildout, starting with one in Texas. As TechCrunch reported, it was previously reported that OpenAI was in talks with Oracle to lease a data center in Abilene, Texas, which could reach nearly one gigawatt of power by 2026. It did not mention any other sites, but said it was evaluating “potential” locations around the country.