There are few details. He met Altman through Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, and the project is being funded by Ive and Laurene Powell Jobs' Emerson Collective. The New York Times It says it could raise $1 billion in funding by the end of the year. There was no mention of Masayoshi Son, the chief executive of SoftBank, who was rumored last year to have invested $1 billion in the project.
The project currently has just 10 employees, but they include Tang Tan and Evans Hankey, two key people who worked with Ive on the iPhone. As for the device itself? Last year, it was rumored to be inspired by touchscreen technology and the original iPhone, which makes sense given Tan and Hankey's involvement.
There is still no timeline on when we will learn more about this project, but the little information that was dropped in the The New York Times It sounds very familiar to anyone who has followed the ai hardware scene in the last year:
Mr. Altman and Mr. Ive discussed how generative ai made the creation of a new computing device possible because the technology could do more for users than traditional software, as it could summarize and prioritize messages, identify and name objects like plants and, eventually, respond to complex requests like booking rides.
