OpenAI recruits Apple talent and supply chain to build ChatGPT device for 2027 launch
The Sam Altman-led firm is recruiting senior Apple staff.
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OpenAI is preparing to enter the consumer hardware market with a ChatGPT-powered device, aiming for launch by 2027, and is drawing heavily on Apple’s people and supply chain to do it.
According to a report by The Information, the Sam Altman-led firm is recruiting senior Apple staff, working with former Apple design chief Jony Ive, and securing contracts with Apple’s key manufacturers as it lays the groundwork for its first product.
OpenAI has expanded its collaboration with Ive following the AI company’s acquisition of his hardware-focused startup, io, earlier this year. The partnership has widened into active recruitment, with Tang Tan — Apple’s former head of product design and now OpenAI’s chief hardware officer — leading a talent drive that has unsettled Apple’s own ranks. The report suggests the exodus was disruptive enough for Apple to cancel its annual offsite meeting for U.S. and China supply chain teams.
Tan has reportedly enticed Apple engineers with promises of “less bureaucracy and more collaboration” at OpenAI.
To deliver large-scale manufacturing, OpenAI has secured a contract with Luxshare, the assembler behind Apple’s iPhones and AirPods. Talks are also under way with Goertek, another Apple partner, to supply key components such as speaker modules.
These moves give OpenAI access to some of the same industrial muscle that helped Apple scale the iPhone into a global product. With Ive at the design helm, industry watchers are already speculating about whether OpenAI could repeat Apple’s 2007 disruption of the mobile phone market.
The company is said to be working on several hardware concepts, including smart glasses, a wearable pin, a digital voice recorder and a display-free smart speaker. Only one of these ideas has reached the prototype stage: a pocket-sized device with “context awareness” that integrates seamlessly with OpenAI’s AI models.
This device, described as having ChatGPT at its core, is intended to offer a more natural human–machine interface than the current smartphone-and-laptop set-up. Early comparisons have been drawn with Humane’s AI pin, though OpenAI is pitching its product as smarter and more intuitive.
The target release window is late 2026 to early 2027, though details remain under wraps. With Big Tech increasingly vying to define the future of personal devices, OpenAI’s bet on hardware marks its boldest move yet beyond software and services.
