OpenAI’s Sam Altman says Jony Ive’s design for physical AI product is ‘so simple and beautiful’

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says Sir Jony Ive’s upcoming AI hardware – now in prototype and set to debut within two years – is strikingly simple, playful, and designed to bring joy, hinting at a radically new, Apple-like approach to interacting with AI.

OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman has called Sir Jony Ive’s AI hardware project “so simple and beautiful”.

Speaking at Emerson Collective’s Demo Day in San Francisco, California, Altman and the former Apple designer offered their most detailed comments yet on the physical AI device they’ve spent more than a year quietly developing.

The still-unnamed product, built under Ive’s new design firm LoveFrom, is expected to debut within two years – “maybe even less,” Ive teased.

While OpenAI had previously said the first hardware would arrive in 2026, Ive’s comments suggest the timeline may be accelerating.

Altman said Ive’s design philosophy, stripping away anything unnecessary while keeping a sense of whimsy, has profoundly shaped the device.

He said: “AI can do so much for you that so much can fall away.”

Altman added that Ive has been relentless about removing every feature that doesn’t matter.

The ChatGPT head added early prototypes are striking enough to make people “want to take a bite out of it”.

The result, he said, is a device that is “so simple and beautiful and playful” that it evokes Apple’s golden-era product magic.

Ive described the core goal as creating an object people instantly want to touch and use without thinking, tools that feel unintimidating and even joyful.

He said: “I love solutions that teeter on appearing almost naive in their simplicity.”

Both Ive and Altman emphasised that delight, not just efficiency, is central to the hardware’s identity.

The project represents one of the tech industry’s most-watched collaborations: a hardware visionary known for the iPhone and a company building frontier AI models.

With the first prototypes now complete and enthusiasm from both leaders running high, anticipation is growing that OpenAI’s first physical device will attempt to redefine how humans interact with AI – not through screens, but through something far more tactile, intuitive and emotionally resonant.