---
title: "OpenAI → io Products"
url: "https://mahouse.world/ma-deals/openai-buy-io-products-2025"
type: "M&A deal"
year: "2025"
author: "Ihor Vlasov"
reviewed: "2026-09-20"
---

# OpenAI → io Products

OpenAI's largest acquisition: an all-stock purchase valuing Jony Ive's year-old AI hardware start-up at $6.5bn, inclusive of the 23% stake OpenAI already held, to build the devices through which its models would be used.

An all-stock purchase of Jony Ive's AI hardware startup, inclusive of the 23% stake OpenAI already held.

- **Acquirer:** OpenAI (United States)
- **Target:** io Products (United States)
- **Value:** $6.5B
- **Announced:** May 2025
- **Completed:** July 2025
- **Sector:** AI
- **Deal type:** acquisition

## Why it mattered

OpenAI's product reached people through other companies' screens — Apple's and Google's phones, Microsoft's software — and each of those companies was building its own assistant. Buying io brought Ive, the designer of the iPhone, his firm LoveFrom and a team of former Apple engineers in-house to build hardware OpenAI would control, on the argument that the interface to an AI would be as decisive as the interface to the internet had been.

The price, for a company with no product, was paid in OpenAI shares at a valuation then above $300bn, which is the only currency in which a $6.5bn purchase of a design studio makes arithmetic sense. The deal closed in July 2025 after a trademark dispute with a hearing-device company over the "io" name forced OpenAI to change how it described the unit.

## What it left behind

A statement of intent rather than a product: the first device was not expected before late 2026. For anyone valuing AI companies it is the clearest example of the sector's acquisition currency — equity in a private company at a valuation the buyer sets — and of the premium the labs will pay to own distribution rather than rent it.

— Ihor Vlasov, M&A FinTech Expert. Last reviewed 2026-09-20. https://mahouse.world/authors/ihor-vlasov