News from the AI & ML world
DeeperML - #aihardware
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@techcrunch.com
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OpenAI is making a bold move into hardware development with the acquisition of Jony Ive's startup, IO, in a deal valued at approximately $6.5 billion in stock. This strategic acquisition signals OpenAI's ambition to unify software, hardware, and data into a seamlessly integrated AI ecosystem. The company aims to move beyond its current role as a backend software provider, powering AI tools for other platforms, and instead, create a comprehensive, end-to-end AI experience. With this acquisition, around 55 engineers and designers, many formerly of Apple, will join OpenAI, while Ive's design firm, LoveFrom, will remain independent and oversee the development of OpenAI's initial hardware products.
This acquisition will allow OpenAI to have control over the whole interaction flow. It will no longer have to embed itself into someone else’s interface but design the experience end-to-end. It is about building a new kind of device, one built from the ground up around AI and something entirely reimagined for a world where AI is the starting point, not the add-on. OpenAI envisions the potential benefits of owning the hardware, including defining how AI behaves in context, gathering crucial user data, and exploring new avenues for monetization. By owning the device, OpenAI gains first-party access to behavioral signals like tone, timing, follow-ups, and habits across multiple sessions, data that is crucial for training models that are more adaptive, nuanced, and personalized. According to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the goal is to create AI devices so compelling that they become as commonplace as laptops or smartphones. Recommended read:
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Carl Franzen@AI News | VentureBeat
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OpenAI is making significant strides in both its software and hardware development. The company's Responses API has received a rapid update, incorporating support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP), native image generation through GPT-4o, and additional features aimed at enterprise users. These enhancements are designed to facilitate the development of intelligent, action-oriented applications. The updated API, initially launched in March 2025, provides developers with the tools to build autonomous workflows, integrating functionalities such as web and file search, and computer use, streamlining the creation of AI agents.
OpenAI is also venturing into hardware, demonstrated by its acquisition of Jony Ive's AI hardware startup, io, for $6.5 billion. This acquisition signals OpenAI's ambition to redefine human-computer interaction through AI-native devices. Jony Ive, the former Apple design chief, and his LoveFrom team will assume a central role in OpenAI's design efforts, influencing the company's entire design approach and future product development. The move aims to position OpenAI as a competitor to tech giants like Apple and Google in the consumer electronics market. According to a leaked recording from an OpenAI staff meeting, CEO Sam Altman hinted at a secret project in collaboration with Jony Ive, focusing on developing AI "companion" devices. These devices are envisioned as a core part of everyday life, potentially replacing or reducing reliance on screens. While specific details are scarce, the device is expected to be small and contextually aware of the user's surroundings. Altman expressed hopes of shipping 100 million of these AI companions, though he acknowledged that wouldn’t be possible on day one. Recommended read:
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Shannon Carroll@Quartz
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OpenAI is making a significant push into the hardware sector by acquiring io, the design startup founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive, in a $6.5 billion deal. This move signifies OpenAI's ambition to create a new generation of AI-powered devices that move beyond current limitations of smartphones and laptops. The collaboration has been ongoing behind the scenes since 2023, with Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman aiming to craft products that make AI more accessible and intuitive. The acquisition includes bringing over 50 engineers and designers from io, including ex-Apple veterans responsible for iconic designs like the iPhone and iPad.
OpenAI and Ive's vision is to revolutionize how we interact with technology. The goal is to develop AI-native devices that seamlessly blend into daily life and enhance AI experiences. Specific product details remain under wraps, but the initial device is rumored to be a pocket-sized gadget without a screen, capable of understanding its user's surroundings and activities. It's designed to complement existing devices like laptops and phones, potentially becoming a "third core device." Altman has even set a target of shipping 100 million units, potentially hitting that mark faster than any other company shipping something new before. This acquisition marks a strategic shift for OpenAI, venturing into consumer-facing products and directly competing with tech giants like Google, Apple, and Microsoft. Jony Ive's design firm, LoveFrom, will take charge of creative work across OpenAI, influencing not only hardware but also the look and feel of all products. Peter Welinder, an early OpenAI executive, will lead the io division, overseeing the development of this new AI product line. AI experts are weighing in on the merger and how the new devices could reshape how we interact with technology. Recommended read:
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@blogs.nvidia.com
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NVIDIA is significantly expanding its presence in the AI ecosystem through strategic partnerships and the introduction of innovative technologies. At Computex 2025, CEO Jensen Huang unveiled NVLink Fusion, a groundbreaking program that opens NVIDIA's high-speed NVLink interconnect technology to non-NVIDIA CPUs and accelerators. This move is poised to solidify NVIDIA's role as a central component in AI infrastructure, even in systems utilizing silicon from other vendors, including MediaTek, Marvell, Fujitsu, and Qualcomm. This initiative represents a major shift from NVIDIA's previously exclusive use of NVLink and is intended to enable the creation of semi-custom AI infrastructures tailored to specific needs.
This strategy ensures that while customers may incorporate rival chips, the underlying AI ecosystem remains firmly rooted in NVIDIA's technologies, including its GPUs, interconnects, and software stack. NVIDIA is also teaming up with Foxconn to construct an AI supercomputer in Taiwan, further demonstrating its commitment to advancing AI capabilities in the region. The collaboration will see Foxconn subsidiary, Big Innovation Company, delivering the infrastructure for 10,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs. This substantial investment aims to empower Taiwanese organizations by providing the necessary AI cloud computing resources to facilitate the adoption of AI technologies across both private and public sectors. In addition to hardware advancements, NVIDIA is also investing in quantum computing research. Taiwan's National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) is deploying a new NVIDIA-powered AI supercomputer designed to support climate science, quantum research, and the development of large language models. Built by ASUS, this supercomputer will feature NVIDIA HGX H200 systems with over 1,700 GPUs, along with other advanced NVIDIA technologies. This initiative aligns with NVIDIA's broader strategy to drive breakthroughs in sovereign AI, quantum computing, and advanced scientific computation, positioning Taiwan as a key hub for AI development and technological autonomy. Recommended read:
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Joe DeLaere@NVIDIA Technical Blog
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NVIDIA has announced the opening of its NVLink technology to rival companies, a move revealed by CEO Jensen Huang at Computex 2025. The new program, called NVLink Fusion, allows companies making custom CPUs and accelerators to license the NVLink port designs. This opens the door for non-NVIDIA chips to integrate with NVIDIA's AI infrastructure, fostering a more flexible AI hardware ecosystem. MediaTek, Marvell, Fujitsu, and Qualcomm are among the early partners signing on to integrate their chips with NVIDIA's GPUs via NVLink Fusion.
NVIDIA's decision to extend NVLink support is a strategic play to remain central to the AI landscape. By enabling companies to combine their custom silicon with NVIDIA's technology, NVIDIA ensures it remains essential to their AI strategies and potentially captures additional revenue streams. NVLink Fusion allows for semi-custom AI infrastructure where other processors are involved, but the underlying connective tissue belongs to NVIDIA. The high-speed interconnect offers significantly higher bandwidth compared to PCIe 5.0, offering advantages for CPU-to-GPU communications. This expansion doesn't mean NVIDIA is entirely opening the interconnect standard. Connecting an Intel CPU to an AMD GPU directly using NVLink Fusion remains impossible. NVIDIA is essentially allowing semi-custom accelerator designs to take advantage of the high-speed interconnect even if the accelerator isn't designed by NVIDIA. As part of the announcement, NVIDIA also unveiled its next-generation Grace Blackwell systems and a new AI platform called DGX Cloud Lepton, further solidifying its position in the AI compute market. Recommended read:
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Joe DeLaere@NVIDIA Technical Blog
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NVIDIA has unveiled NVLink Fusion, a technology that expands the capabilities of its high-speed NVLink interconnect to custom CPUs and ASICs. This move allows customers to integrate non-NVIDIA CPUs or accelerators with NVIDIA's GPUs within their rack-scale setups, fostering the creation of heterogeneous computing environments tailored for diverse AI workloads. This technology opens up the possibility of designing semi-custom AI infrastructure with NVIDIA's NVLink ecosystem, allowing hyperscalers to leverage the innovations in NVLink, NVIDIA NVLink-C2C, NVIDIA Grace CPU, NVIDIA GPUs, NVIDIA Co-Packaged Optics networking, rack scale architecture, and NVIDIA Mission Control software.
NVLink Fusion enables users to deliver top performance scaling with semi-custom ASICS or CPUs. As hyperscalers are already deploying full NVIDIA rack solutions, this expansion caters to the increasing demand for specialized AI factories, where diverse accelerators work together at rack-scale with maximal bandwidth and minimal latency to support the largest number of users in the most power-efficient way. The advantage of using NVLink for CPU-to-GPU communications is that it offers 14x higher bandwidth compared to PCIe 5.0 (128 GB/s). The technology will be offered in two configurations. The first will be for connecting custom CPUs to Nvidia GPUs. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang emphasized that AI is becoming a fundamental infrastructure, akin to the internet and electricity. He envisions an AI infrastructure industry worth trillions of dollars, powered by AI factories that produce valuable tokens. NVIDIA's approach involves expanding its ecosystem through partnerships and platforms like CUDA-X, which is used across a range of applications. NVLink Fusion is a crucial part of this vision, enabling the construction of semi-custom AI systems and solidifying NVIDIA's role at the center of AI development. Recommended read:
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