Monologue: Jony Ive and OpenAI's New BS Machine

In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through the ridiculousness of OpenAI acquiring Jony Ive’s pre-product hardware startup for $6.5bn in stock - and why it only proves how washed the company might be. YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more. WSJ: What Sam Altman Told OpenAI About the Secret Device He’s Making With Jony Ive https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/what-sam-altman-told-openai-about-the-secret-device-hes-making-with-jony-ive-f1384005 Bloomberg: OpenAI to Buy AI Device Startup From Apple Veteran Jony Ive in $6.5 Billion Deal https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-21/openai-to-buy-apple-veteran-jony-ive-s-ai-device-startup-in-6-5-billion-deal --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at https://discord.com/invite/QUUQUP9szv Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitron See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:39Ed Zitron?

  Hello and welcome to this week's Better Offline Monologue. I'm your host, Ed Zitron.

• 0:50Ed Zitron?

  And I am going a little insane. You've likely seen the news that OpenAI is buying, and that's in air quotes, by the way, famed Apple designer Jony Ive's startup, I/O. You may think that I'm about to explain to you what this company does other than build devices or why it was acquired, and I cannot tell you. Oh, and by the way, the air quotes of a "buying" are because they bought the entire company in $6.5 billion of OpenAI stock. Stock in a company that is unprofitable. These aren't even real stock units. I'll get to that later. By the way, Jony Ive, he worked at Apple, he worked on designing products for the iPod, the iMac and iPhone, worked closely with Steve Jobs, dined out on that for many years. He left Apple in 2019. Now, this announcement came in the form of a nine-minute-long video that does not explain anything about the company,

• 1:34Ed Zitron?

  but there's been some reporting, if you could call it that. Now, let's quote the Wall Street Journal's Burbidgeon, who I generally really like, but there is a piss-take happening here. Altman and I have offered a few hints at the secret project they've been working on. The product will be capable of being aware of the user's surroundings in life, will be unobtrusive, able to rest in one's pocket and on one's desk, and will be a third-core device a person would put on a desk after a MacBook Pro and an iPhone. Now, that "would" and "will," those are load-bearing, by the way. I continue though. The Journal earlier reported that the device won't be a phone and that Ivan Altman's intent is to help Ween users from screens. Altman said that the device isn't a pair of glasses and that I've been skeptical about building something to wear on the body.

• 2:17Ed Zitron?

  Altman and I've offered details about how the collaboration grew over the past few years. Eighteen months ago, OpenAI Vice President of Product Peter Wellender began working with Ives team. The two sides became excited about a specific device last fall. What device is that? Who the fuck knows? Print it, baby! There's also a thing in this article about this effectively tripling or quadrupling the value of OpenAI. It's complete bullshit. In fact, all of this sounds like complete bollocks to me. Why are you announcing this now? What is it you're buying? Who knows? The Journal also claims that Altman believes that they will ship 100 million of these theoretical devices by late 2026. The magical year when everything from AGI to powerful agents are meant to work. The bullshit year. I can't wait.

• 3:00Ed Zitron?

  Anyway, Jony Ive also gets to keep his independent design studio Lovefrom, which has already been working with OpenAI and will, according to Bloomberg, take over design for all of OpenAI, including its software. Apparently, Jony and Sammy initially met up to improve the interface of ChatGPT. When did that fucking happen? Bloomberg also reports that Altman and I've have yet to work out a user interface for the new hardware product, which is a big deal, considering it's meant to be out in like a year and a half? What are we doing here? Why? I understand that objective reporting requires you to just say the things that... But I feel like, I feel like at some point you have to just say, all of this is theoretical.

• 3:41Ed Zitron?

  It's complete wank and all signs point to this venture being a load of bollocks. It's a smokescreen, a desperate move by OpenAI, a desperate company. All stock deals are quite common in large public corporations that are quite liquid, but they have stock that has value that can then be sold, right? But OpenAI is neither public nor a corporation. It's the for-profit arm of a nonprofit desperate to convert its for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation. They don't have stock. They don't have stock, they have these goddamn profit participation units. It's, it's so silly, it's all very silly. And Jony Ive and his team of 55 people, they're working on a very real thing and they were acquired with 6.5 billion dollars of very real paper.

• 4:26Ed Zitron?

  Profit participation units in a company that burns billions of dollars and has never turned any profit. To be clear, the company I O is somehow different to Love from his design firm. 55 people work at I O. I think like that many work at Love from. Really not clear what they work on at I O though. No one seems to know, no one seems to have a single detail other than the fact that they can't tell you what they're working on. Which sounds a lot like they have no idea. Now you may also wonder what Jony Ive has been up to since he left Apple in 2019. The answer is extremely vague. In 2020, he founded Love from in 2019, the design firm. And in 2020, they signed a non-specific multi-year partnership to design the future of Airbnb.

• 5:10Ed Zitron?

  Apple has apparently kept working with Love from in some way that I can really not find any information about. Love from also worked on some sort of seal for King Charles of England to give away to, and I quote, "recognize private sector companies that are leading the way in creating sustainable markets." They also designed an entirely new font for it, which does not matter in the slightest to anyone, but led to some reporters writing entire stories about it because Jonny fucking Ive was involved. In 2023, Ive and his team redesigned Lin Sondex LP12 turntable in, and I quote, "a respectful and gentle way." And in 2024, he teamed up with fashion brand Moncler to make an out-to-wear line. And his work appears to involve some kind of magnetic button that can click together different pieces.

• 5:53Ed Zitron?

  Just kind of cool, I'd have loved to actually read about that, but that you can't. It's just, people just put what he says in the thing, they don't go and find the clothes. I'd have actually been interested in that, can't find shit about it because no one actually holds any of these people accountable. They just go, "Oh, it's Jony Ive, I'll listen to whatever shit he's..." Anyway. I'm very sorry, okay, I'm very sorry, but reading about this really frustrated me. And I was also working with Ferrari, apparently on a new electric vehicle. Can we see it? Do we know when it will be released? What kind? What's the range? What will it look like? No, none for you, none for you, you silly little, you silly little freak. How dare you ask Jony Ive to tell you what he's doing?

• 6:36Ed Zitron?

  So in summary, since 2019, Jony Ive has redesigned Airbnb in some way, made a new font, made a new system for putting on clothing, made a medal for the King of England to give companies that recycle, and made some nonspecific contribution to creating an electric Ferrari, while also designing a nonspecific device that OpenAI intends to ship to hundreds of millions of people. And to be clear, like, they are designing a product that another company run by Jony Ive, I/O, will manufacture. Jony Ive has not, from what I can tell, worked on the consumer electronics products since he left Apple. And let's be really clear, Apple has not really been cooking since Steve Jobs died, and their coolest shit in recent history came after Ive left, specifically the new generation of M-series laptops, iMacs and the like.

• 7:20Ed Zitron?

  By the middle of 2024, all of his designers left the company. And really, I like the iMacs and MacBook Airs way more now. And I know, whatever, like, hindsight's 2020, like, I'm sure, like, the original MacBook Air was kind of cool, but it's like, how much did Jony Ive actually work on that? And it's actually really difficult to find out what it is that Jony Ive did at Apple, other than be associated with things. What you can see, however, is how good Jony Ive is at deals, getting people to pay to be associated with Jony Ive, the guy who worked with Steve Jobs on big products that people like. Has he built anything people like recently? Who knows? But because people are lacking in object permanence, they believe Ive's still got it, even if it doesn't really mean anything. In any case, this deal is ridiculous.

• 8:03Ed Zitron?

  A mere week ago, Sam Altman announced that Instacart CEO Fitchy Simo, who was already on the OpenAI board, would become the CEO of applications OpenAI, and is, and I quote the Wall Street Journal, "charged with helping the chat GPT maker become a profitable global business, while remaking an internal culture that has been mired in executive infighting and high-profile departures." Yet as part of the acquisition, Jony Ive will take over all... All designer OpenAI along with his team of fifty five people from I/O. I think Love From will be as well. It's just, this whole deal is such a fucking mess. And Simo, when she joins in the summer, will now oversee a company that has fundamentally changed since she took the position. And be left to deal with the fallout because her whole fucking job will be to take responsibility for the mess that Sam Altman's made.

• 8:46Ed Zitron?

  And man, what a mess. OpenAI burned five billion dollars in twenty twenty four and is on course to burn over ten billion dollars this year. Acquiring another company in an all-stock deal at this stage isn't a victory. It's a sign that something is financially rotten at America's dampest AI startup. As I've discussed on previous episodes, OpenAI has maybe fifteen billion dollars of liquidity at any given time. And has promised nineteen billion dollars to complete the Stargate data centers. As well as allegedly offering three billion dollars, though it's not obvious if this will be in cash or stock to buy the coding startup Windsurf. And when I say by the way, they have fifteen billion dollars of liquidity. I mean that at max. It's, it could be way less because that is just the combination of their funding and in and out revenue.

• 9:28Ed Zitron?

  And also, putting aside the fact that neither I/O nor OpenAI have actually settled on a product. Hardware is hard. Research and development is expensive. Apple spends tens of billions of dollars a year on it. And so is manufacturing, especially if this device is meant to be smaller than a smartphone, and especially in the era of tariffs. Unless they assume that those will be gone by then, which they won't. Worse still, the margins on hardware are much lower, about ten to twenty percent, and there isn't a chance in hell that using this device won't require you to subscribe to ChatGPT. Which means users will have to pay the subscription fee on top of this theoretical device. And also be pinging ChatGPT servers, which are expensive and unsustainable and unprofitable. Unprofitable to run even. I swear I should be able to say unprofitable by now. I say it enough fucking times.

• 10:11Ed Zitron?

  I should also add that if there's one thing that Sam Altman has proven, it's that he's fundamentally bad at product. While ChatGPT might be popular, it's hard to say what it really does. Which you can get away with when your free software is hyped by every media outlet in the world, but can't with a device that will likely cost hundreds of dollars. OpenAI has also proven that it's not very good at making the kind of seamless and effortless product that companies like Apple are known for. And let's be real, with what money are they building this crap? You can't pay factories in stock. In any case, this is a desperate move made by OpenAI to try and bolster the valuation of a company that's lost the plot, if they ever found it. If anything, this device suggests a fundamental lack in ChatGPT as a product. And while boosters may frame this as the next generation of OpenAI, it feels more

• 10:54Ed Zitron?

  like a smokescreen to convince people that this company isn't washed. Members of the media treat this company with suspicion and demand that they actually show you something before claiming this is the biggest, most hugest move in Silicon Valley history. Don't embarrass yourself by humoring these twerps.

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