- Former Apple design chief Jony Ive and his design firm LoveFrom will be taking over design at OpenAI.
- OpenAI is also acquiring Ive's startup io in a $6.5 billion deal.
- Here's all you need to know about Jony Ive.
Jony Ive, Apple's longtime design chief, entered into a new partnership with OpenAI.
Ive and his design firm LoveFrom will be leading creative and design at OpenAI, developing everything from devices to novel projects. In essence, Ive — the mind behind the iPhone — will help shape the AI era with his signature design sensibilities.
OpenAI is also acquiring io, the hardware startup Ive launched last year, with Scott Cannon, Tang Tan, and Evans Hankey, in a $6.5 billion deal.
In a video Altman and Ive posted to OpenAI's social media, Altman said he and Ive started talking two years ago about "what the future of AI and new kinds of computers was going to look like."
Ive is best known for his nearly 30 years at Apple. In that time, he received countless awards and accolades for his ingenuity and commitment to Apple's minimalist design aesthetic. Ive's success at Apple made him a household name and catapulted him into pop culture discourse.
Here's all you need to know.
Early life and education
Jonathan Paul Ive was born on February 27, 1967, in Chingford, England, a suburb of London. His father was a silversmith, and his mother was a psychotherapist. While attending secondary school, Ive was diagnosed with dyslexia. Ive studied industrial design at Newcastle Polytechnic, now called Northumbria University.
Jony Ive's rise at Apple
After a brief stint at Acme Corp., Ive joined Apple in 1992. Ive had already made a name for himself by then, and it took Apple's design leader, Bob Brunner, years to recruit him.
Once he joined, he quickly rose through the ranks and became Senior VP of Design after Steve Jobs became CEO in 1997. Jobs' first major assignment for Ive was the classic, candy-colored iMac. Ive went on to lead the design on Apple's biggest products, including the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. Ive maintained creative oversight over the design of Apple's products and worked with CEO Tim Cook to launch new products like the Apple Watch.
While Jobs was famously tough to get along with, Ive has said his best years at Apple were with Jobs. Ive described his time working with Jobs at Apple from 1997 to 2011 as "the most joyful and extraordinary 15 years of my life." He also said the two ate lunch together "every day of the week," went on family vacations, and had continuous conversations about design.
In May 2015, Ive was promoted to the role of chief design officer at Apple. From 2015 to 2017, Ive focused on Apple's new headquarters, the Apple Park "spaceship," for which he designed most of the little details. Ive regained direct control of Apple's design team in 2017. In June 2019, Apple announced that Ive was leaving the company after 27 years.
Ive said he left because the projects he'd been working closely on were completed, in an interview with the Financial Times at the time. He also told the outlet, "I think that part of the timing for LoveFrom is in some ways connected to having a very clear sense about the health and vitality of the design team," Ives said to the financial newspaper. "I'm actually looking forward to contributing in a different way to projects we've been working together on for, in some cases, many years."
Ive's design philosophy
The cornerstone of Ive's success is his unique design philosophy.
Over more than two decades at Apple, Ive led the design of iconic Apple products like the iMac in 1998, iPhone in 2007, and Apple Watch in 2014 — shaping everything from hardware and software to packaging, retail stores, and even Apple's campus.
Ive said in an interview with Stripe CEO Patrick Collison that his ideas and work at Apple were often inspired by Dieter Rams, the German industrial designer who had a "less but better" approach.
He's also said that whenever he starts working on a project, he thinks about the utility of a product and then he begins to consider what it will actually look like.
And he spends a lot of time on research. To ensure he created the right color tones for the iMac, Ive talked with jelly bean manufacturers. To learn how to make super-thin metal for laptops, he sought out Japanese metalworkers.
Ultimately, he makes products that care about functionality and design. In a profile of Ive in Time he said, "We're surrounded by anonymous, poorly made objects. It's tempting to think it's because the people who use them don't care — just like the people who make them. But what we've shown is that people do care. It's not just about aesthetics. They care about things that are thoughtfully conceived and well-made. We make and sell a very, very large number of (hopefully) beautiful, well-made things. Our success is a victory for purity, integrity — for giving a damn."
Career post-Apple
Ive launched his own independent design company called LoveFrom in 2019 with his fellow designer Marc Newson. The company counted Apple and Airbnb among its early clients. Ive and LoveFrom plan to continue to work closely with OpenAI but remain independent, a company spokesperson told BI.
Last year, Ive launched io, as part of a joint project between LoveFrom and OpenAI, Wired reported. In the fourth quarter of 2024, Io and OpenAI agreed for OpenAI to receive a 23% stake in io.
Now, it's fully acquiring the firm.
"It became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer, and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company," Altman and Ive wrote in a post on OpenAI's website.
Awards and recognition
Ive has received numerous design awards and honorary degrees for this work.
In May 2012 he was named a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his contributions to design. He was knighted in Buckingham Palace by Princess Anne, Queen Elizabeth II's only daughter and said the experience was "absolutely thrilling."
He's received awards, including San Francisco MoMA's Lifetime Achievement Award, Inaugural Medal, the Benjamin Franklin Medal, the President's Award, the Royal Academy of Engineering's President's Medal, and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum's Product Design Award.
He also holds honorary degrees from the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge.
Personal life
A London native, Ive now lives near Apple's headquarters, having purchased a $17 million, four-bedroom home in Pacific Heights — on a stretch known, fittingly, as "Billionaire's Row." He's also frequently spotted at local clubs.
Like many tech executives, he owns a beach house on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. A lifelong car enthusiast, Ive once helped his father restore an Austin-Healey Sprite, maintains a personal collection, and even bought Steve Jobs' former plane.
