OpenAI and Jony Ive’s ‘io’ brand has vanished, but their AI hardware deal remains

OpenAI has scrubbed mentions of io, the hardware startup co-founded by celebrated Apple decorator Jony Ive, from its website and societal media channels. The abrupt alteration intimately follows their caller announcement of OpenAI’s astir $6.5 cardinal acquisition and plans to make dedicated AI hardware.

OpenAI tells The Verge the woody is inactive happening, but it scrubbed mentions owed to a trademark suit from Iyo, the proceeding instrumentality startup spun retired of Google’s moonshot factory.

The announcement blog station and a nine-minute video featuring Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are nary longer available. The blog station from Ive and Altman announcing the woody said, “The io team, focused connected processing products that inspire, empower and enable, volition present merge with OpenAI to enactment much intimately with the research, engineering and merchandise teams successful San Francisco.”

OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wood:

This leafage is temporarily down owed to a tribunal bid pursuing a trademark ailment from iyO astir our usage of the sanction ‘io.’ We don’t hold with the ailment and are reviewing our options.