A big deal in the local tech world was announced Wednesday, as OpenAI is reportedly acquiring Johnny Ive's secretive hardware startup io for $6.5 billion.

The acquisition, reportedly an all-stock deal, comes with the announcement of a new company called io, which will work to produce some sort of new AI-based hardware — actually a "family of products" — using technology from OpenAI.

"I think we have the opportunity here to completely reimagine what it means to use a computer," says OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman in a video posted today, alongside former Apple design lead Johnny Ive. "Jony's the deepest thinker I've ever met," Altman adds. "What that leads him to come up with is unmatched."

The video shows Sam and Jony walking separately around North Beach and downtown San Francisco, on a perfectly clear and sunny day, and features voice-over of each man complimenting each other and making grand statements about how we're "at the beginning of... what will be the greatest technological revolution of our lifetimes."

"I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this place and to this moment," Ive says. "While I am both anxious and excited about the responsibility of the substantial work ahead, I am so grateful for the opportunity to be part of such an important collaboration. The values and vision of Sam and the teams at OpenAI and io are a rare inspiration."

The 58-year-old Ive is of course credited with the design aesthetics that defined the Apple brand, beginning with the colorful, translucent iMac G3 models of the late 1990s, the original iPod in 2001, and the iPhone in 2007. Ive left Apple in 2019.

We learned in February 2023 that Ive had acquired a two-story, 10,000-square-foot building at 807 Montgomery Street in Jackson Square for his design startup LoveFrom, and now we know that the impetus for that move was likely the nascent deal with Open AI — Altman says his company has been quietly working with Ive for two years now.

"This city has enabled and been the place of the creation of so much," says Ive. "I feel I owe this city such an enormous debt of gratitude."

Ive says that he founded io with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tang Tan in 2024, and the startup reportedly now has 55 employees, all of whom will become employees of OpenAI.

Philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs, is said to be an investor in io, via her social change organization the Emerson Collective — which is also working on revamping the former San Francisco Art Institute campus as a new artists' hub of some kind.

What the hardware or devices may look like is anyone's guess. As the New York Times writes today, "If the two men succeed — and it is a very big if — they could spur what is known as 'ambient computing.' Rather than typing and taking photographs on smartphones, future devices like pendants or glasses that use A.I. could process the world in real time, fielding questions and analyzing images and sounds in seamless ways."

Ive has reportedly expressed regrets about the dominant, distracting role smartphones now play in our lives, and Altman echoed that in an interview with the Times. "I don’t feel good about my relationship with technology right now," Altman says. "It feels a lot like being jostled on a crowded street in New York, or being bombarded with notifications and flashing lights in Las Vegas."

The pair says they want new devices to break through the noise and elevate humanity in some way.

The video from Altman and Ive shows the pair meeting up around the corner from Ive's offices, at Cafe Zoetrope. And the video is very much a celebration of San Francisco itself as a hub of innovation and imaginative thinking, something that City Hall is naturally celebrating following today's announcement.

"Jony Ive and OpenAI’s partnership is a big vote of confidence in San Francisco,” said Mayor Daniel Lurie on social media. "Our city has a strong history of creativity and innovation, a legacy that is alive and well today. This is the place to create the future."

And Sarah Dennis Phillips, executive director of the mayor's Office of Economic and Workforce Development, tells the Chronicle, "San Francisco has been Jony Ive's creative home. San Francisco birthed OpenAI and supported Sam Altman's ongoing innovation. It's where these incredible individuals, their creativity and their innovation can crash together to create something new."