AI Hardware Company From Jone Ive, Sam Altman Seeks $1 Billion In Funding 52
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Former Apple design lead Jony Ive and current OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are seeking funding for a new company that will produce an "artificial intelligence-powered personal device," according to The Information's sources, who are said to be familiar with the plans. The exact nature of the device is unknown, but it will not look anything like a smartphone, according to the sources. We first heard tell of this venture in the fall of 2023, but The Information's story reveals that talks are moving forward to get the company off the ground.
Ive and Altman hope to raise at least $1 billion for the new company. The complete list of potential funding sources they've spoken with is unknown, but The Information's sources say they are in talks with frequent OpenAI investor Thrive Capital as well as Emerson Collective, a venture capital firm founded by Laurene Powell Jobs. SoftBank CEO and super-investor Masayoshi Son is also said to have spoken with Altman and Ive about the venture. Financial Times previously reported that Son wanted Arm (another company he has backed) to be involved in the project. [...] Altman already has his hands in several other AI ventures besides OpenAI. The Information reports that there is no indication yet that OpenAI would be directly involved in the new hardware company.
Ive and Altman hope to raise at least $1 billion for the new company. The complete list of potential funding sources they've spoken with is unknown, but The Information's sources say they are in talks with frequent OpenAI investor Thrive Capital as well as Emerson Collective, a venture capital firm founded by Laurene Powell Jobs. SoftBank CEO and super-investor Masayoshi Son is also said to have spoken with Altman and Ive about the venture. Financial Times previously reported that Son wanted Arm (another company he has backed) to be involved in the project. [...] Altman already has his hands in several other AI ventures besides OpenAI. The Information reports that there is no indication yet that OpenAI would be directly involved in the new hardware company.
I'm not sure I want a Ive designed device anymore (Score:5, Interesting)
We discuss this today at work that post Ive MacBook Pros are designed by Engineers and that Apple no longer puts form before function. The Mx series are bulkier than the previous Intel based machines but it is worth it because the thermal management and battery life as much better. It looks like the hardware engineers said they needed sufficient room for proper airflow to ensure cooling and I never ever hear the fans kick in. This in turns reduce energy consumption (turning the fans to dissipate the heat) and increase the batteries lifetime by not overcooking them all the time.
Re: I'm not sure I want a Ive designed device anym (Score:2)
Kind of moot either way given macos looks and behaves more and more like ios. Earlier today while looking at apple's APIs, I realized that apple likes to advertise features that you can't even use. E.g. https://jedda.me/managed-devic... [jedda.me]
Think like when you try to do something in Linux and get a "only root can do that" response. No big deal, sudo to the rescue.
Though in macos you'll possibly run into a situation more akin to "only apple can do that". Sadly sudo can't help with that. If you're not a first part
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Why's that a problem? Apple will take care of you. Apple loves you. Apple is all.
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Re: I'm not sure I want a Ive designed device any (Score:2)
That's a partition, not the same thing.
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I was talking about the hardware designs, the software design is an other can of worms for sure, but I still much prefer it over Windows, or the inconsistencies of the various Linux distributions (cgroup v1 vs v2 for containers, systemd in some vendors but not others, etc...).
For example there are some apps and services that love to steal focus, and there is zero solution to tame them in macOS, while I do believe it is possible on Windows. The one that nags me the most is the AWS VPN client which I'm forced
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The agony, of course, is that Dieter Rams was all about function, which informed his designs. If Apple had hired him (he's still alive, incredibly) instead of just imitating him, he'd probably have taken a significantly different direction that actually respected the complexity of the underlying hardware instead of trying to butcher it. And the logos would have been smaller [youtube.com]!
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You and Dieter are both so correct.
He understands the human psychology of usage, not just the psychology of shiny objects. (Look, fish!)
Thanks for posting this.
Re: I'm not sure I want a Ive designed device anym (Score:2)
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Just what I want, a woke AI in my pocket.
This is going nowhere.
Dotcom 2.0, look forward to AI-bust (Score:2)
Almost anyone announcing a new website can get millions of VC money in the Dotcom era, this looks no different.
Get ready for the AI-bust coming in the next few years when most of these companies go bust.
Too Big To .Bomb v1.0 (Score:2)
Almost anyone announcing a new website can get millions of VC money in the Dotcom era, this looks no different.
Uh, not quite This looks considerably different than the .bomb era in one major way. Before, the product (or sales pitch) had to at least fail first before droves of people were laid off from a vaporware scam. AI has got Greed whipped up in a frenzy so much that we’re laying people off as some kind of preemptive strike against humans because of the sheer awesomeness of AI sales pitches. Yeah. That toddler-grade AI shitware is taking jobs already. And when they go bust, that job ain’t being
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A billion in funding means you're very, very much on the hook to your investors. They're going to want to see a plan for an aspirational IPO of $100bn inside maybe 5-10 years. If you really sweet talk them because your idea is so "vital" for human kind, they might come down to $50bn.
Whilst the mere mention of AI might get idiots to extend their multipliers in company valuations, a $50-100bn company isn't easy to construct - it's gonna have to have something seriously good at its heart (even if wrapped in so
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>A billion in funding means you're very, very much on the hook to your investors
So what? That doesn't mean you can't fail!
Humane.AI (Score:3)
is it going to be like Humane.AI, which is an $800 bluetooth speaker?
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Seems Pixar's EVE [fandom.com] is the style of bot Jony Ive would design. The animators intentionally mirrored Apple's look, which was heavily driven by Ive.
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Yeah, the pitch sounds just like Humane.AI. I don't get it.
I'd live to be able to query ChatGPT or similar via voice command on my phone without having to specifically start the app, but that doesn't mean I want to *only* interact with my phone by shouting at it in public places and not have a screen to actually, you know, see things, or *only* be able to interact with my phone via ChatGPT.
I'm overAltmanned (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, I get it, he's a brilliant man, and well on his way to becoming a historical figure as important as Jobs or Gates, but I'm sick and tired of hearing about the latest thing Sam Altman has said or done or is rumored to be planning to do. I would appreciate him just shutting up for a couple of weeks.
Re:I'm overAltmanned (Score:5, Informative)
That's a rich person thing. Why put up your own money when you can talk someone else into it?
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That's how you get rich. Other people effectively pay you to do something useful with their money.
It's not just a rich person thing either. If you've got a mortgage you're doing it too.
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I mean
People were saying the same thing about another non-technical genius kid who never really explained his methods a year or so ago. His name was also Sam, if I recall. I wonder what happened to him.
Ohhhh. Oh no.
Re: (Score:2)
he pretended to be a bank man but instead he fried all the money
Re:I'm overAltmanned (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, the longer this Altman story goes on, the more I'm bothered by him. He's had a lot of really stupid ideas in the past, he seems to have a lot of really stupid ideas at present, but he seems to have networked and schmoozed his way into a current position of great power.
The portrayal of him from his sister and people who knew him in the past sure paints a consistent picture of a sociopath. And it's funny that when confronted with this, Altman's defenders never push back with, "No, he's not a sociopath!", but rather "Look, you have to be a sociopath in a job like this, everyone in jobs like this is a sociopath, it would be wrong for him to NOT be a sociopath!"
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Yeah, the longer this Altman story goes on, the more I'm bothered by him. He's had a lot of really stupid ideas in the past, he seems to have a lot of really stupid ideas at present, but he seems to have networked and schmoozed his way into a current position of great power.
The portrayal of him from his sister and people who knew him in the past sure paints a consistent picture of a sociopath. And it's funny that when confronted with this, Altman's defenders never push back with, "No, he's not a sociopath!", but rather "Look, you have to be a sociopath in a job like this, everyone in jobs like this is a sociopath, it would be wrong for him to NOT be a sociopath!"
Sociopath seems to have slipped into this weird conundrum among most people now. If you're poor and a sociopath, you're a weirdo, a freak, a bad person. If your rich and a sociopath, you're to be applauded, lauded, patting on the back, worshipped, and held up as some sort of paragon of amazing everything. Granted, it fits right in with our Greed = God bullshit, but it skeeves out those of us that are still trying, somehow, to live a somewhat kind and virtuous life. Or at least, as close to one as we can get
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Look, I get it, he's a brilliant man, and well on his way to becoming a historical figure as important as Jobs or Gates
lolwut?!!
When I think "AI-powered personal device"... (Score:3)
When I think "AI-powered personal device", there are only a few things I can think of that make sense.
I could maybe see some new home control system that did everything on-device for security reasons.
I could see some kind of personal robot that knows how to look for missing items, get things out of the refrigerator, scrub the kitchen floor, clean the toilets, and vacuum. All of these are pretty simple.
And, of course, I could see companionship bots that use generative AI as an alternative to romantic entanglement. Ignoring the obvious Futurama reference [theinfosphere.org], there's already a lot of that sort of thing online, and it's not like there haven't been bots for that sort of thing before. Unfortunately, the combination could result in mass depopulation within a couple of generations because of people not wanting to deal with the headaches that come with relationships with actual people. Then again, maybe that's the idea — hard to say.
But what I think would be most useful would be a bot that can do all of the things you don't have time for. Basic cooking, cleaning, and dusting are, of course, useful, but an ideal bot would do other things, too, like doing laundry (including folding them and putting them away or hanging them on hangers in the correct closet), painting your house inside and out, reroofing the house, washing the car and vacuuming it, weeding the flowerbeds/artificial turf/lawn/driveway, walking the dog, cleaning the aquarium, changing the bedsheets, straightening up, and so on.
Just random thoughts.
Re:When I think "AI-powered personal device"... (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that to effectively handle these "simple" tasks in the real world, unless your home is laboratory-controlled conditions, you have to first solve things that are very hard, to deal with deviations from how things are expected to be and behave. It's this that has kept such home assistant robots from hitting the market, despite huge demand, for the past century. And it's only now, with the ability of things like Transformers to provide a understanding of the implications of complex interactions of past-received data to handle novel situations, that such devices actually stand a chance. But then you're no longer limited to "simple" tasks once you have the resiliency to handle the unexpected and apply logic to situations.
It's still a question of whether a basic Transformers architecture can do this with sufficient supporting code, or whether you need something like Q*, to apply an A*-like search algorithm to problem solving.
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If you want "look for missing items, get things out of the refrigerator, scrub the kitchen floor, clean the toilets, and vacuum" you are suddenly talking about a *lot* more robot. Not necessarily 'call Boston Dynamics for their most humanoid biped', yo
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Re:When I think "AI-powered personal device"... (Score:4, Interesting)
A general purpose housekeeping robot will be amazing, but it cannot possibly happen suddenly. We don't even see single-purpose industrial robots doing similar tasks in businesses yet - e.g. autonomously polishing the floor at WalMart, or stocking the shelves at Lowe's. When you see that, you can start the clock on general-purpose hosekeeping robots for the home.
For many, many years [reddit.com], Walmart has used autonomous floor polishers made by Tennant [southeaste...ipment.net] that look kind of like a miniature Zamboni. They still have to have maintenance people do some of the cleaning, because the machines are bulky and can't reach everywhere, but that's more a question of designing for coverage area versus maneuverability. Various companies also sell small floor polishers for your home that look kind of like a Roomba.
The ones Walmart uses charge an annual subscription fee for the AI, which for all I know might mean that there's a call center in India that takes control if it gets stuck, so it may not really be as autonomous as would be necessary for real-world home use, but they do exist and are widely used anyway.
And although I don't think anybody is using robots for actual stocking yet other than stocking of drink bottles in convenience stores [wpde.com], Walmart is experimenting with robots for checking stock levels [youtube.com] so that a person can move inventory into the right place, which significantly reduces the amount of human labor in that area. And of course Amazon is using robots for picking items in warehouses [youtube.com], which is kind of the reverse of that job.
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The problem is that to effectively handle these "simple" tasks in the real world, unless your home is laboratory-controlled conditions, you have to first solve things that are very hard, to deal with deviations from how things are expected to be and behave. It's this that has kept such home assistant robots from hitting the market, despite huge demand, for the past century. And it's only now, with the ability of things like Transformers to provide a understanding of the implications of complex interactions of past-received data to handle novel situations, that such devices actually stand a chance. But then you're no longer limited to "simple" tasks once you have the resiliency to handle the unexpected and apply logic to situations.
It's still a question of whether a basic Transformers architecture can do this with sufficient supporting code, or whether you need something like Q*, to apply an A*-like search algorithm to problem solving.
I'm not an AI expert by any means, so take this with a grain of salt.
It goes without saying that navigating a house isn't a trivial problem, but getting around complex terrain has been done by many companies at this point (e.g. Boston Dynamics, Tesla, etc.), and that part of its programming would end up being a foundational behavior on top of which every other behavior would be stacked, so I'm kind of deliberately ignoring that part.
Beyond that, for scrubbing floors and vacuuming, it's just a trivial bounds
What is it? (Score:4, Funny)
Is it a dildo?
My money is on a dildo.
Of course it's company policy never to imply ownership in the event of a dildo...
Cherry 2000 (Score:2)
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"In the year 2017, the United States has fragmented into post-apocalyptic wastelands with a few civilized areas" - hey, they might be onto something ;)
AI powered personal device? Personal server? (Score:3)
I remember, ages ago, Intel prototyped a personal server, which was basically a headless PC where people would store their data on them and tote it around, before everyone decided the cloud was the answer to everything.
I can see this being something to have in households... a server that not just did GPU stuff so a game can be played on an entry level machine and streamed back in full 4k with 120 fps, but other things as well. NAS storage is a given, but having something like S3 storage with object locking to ensure data is secured in a ransomware resistant way can be useful.
Then, there are all the other doodads a NAS can provide. Plex, media streaming, backing up remote sites like one's personal WordPress site, a way to cache cloud drive providers like Dropbox or Onedrive, allowing for access without need for additional software, easy backups, maybe even some virtualization if the device has enough CPU grunt and RAM.
However, I don't know if this would be a mainstream best-seller, or something esoteric. However, before the iPhone, people considered smartphones a niche market, because people wanted something the RAZR, or even the ROKR so they didn't have to carry a phone and an iPod with them, so having a personal server might be a niche that would get popular quickly.
For the love of... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
...stop giving these assholes money!
How else should the rich abuse the tax loopholes they lobbied for? They paid good one-time tax-deductible money to political coffers for that right.
Maybe we should stop electing leaders who perpetuate the current bribe-based system.
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Please, describe the tax loop holes (AKA deductions, you know like medical expenses, home mortgage, etc.) at play here.
Say a "rich" person gives $1M to a startup, and the startup flames out, losing 100% of the investment. The "rich" person gets to deduct the lost $1M from their taxable income, lowering their tax bill by a fraction of the investment (the fraction depends on their tax rate). If that investment breaks even, no taxes owed (no profit, no tax on profit), an if the investment doubles (returns $2M)
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I don't see a great tax-avoidance scheme in these types of investments, what am I missing?
Seriously? You don't see any advantage in being rich enough to be able to legally bribe the literal lawmakers in a country that otherwise demands 50%+ of your income to be paid back in taxes when playing 'fair and square'?
Those in Control aren't known as The Donor Class for nothing.
The capitalists funding the largest ventures don't seem to care much about risk either, since there's a good chance they'll cash out on socializing any loss in the land of Too Big To Fail. Yet another advantage they bribed for.
Ive? (Score:2)
Great news, the device will have no ports and overheat.
Haha
Really? (Score:2)
Editor's couldn't even spell Jony's name correctly in the headline?
Prototype (Score:2)
According to an industry insider whom I just made up, the device will take the form of a spherical white hat which continuously scans the brain and the full electromagnetic spectrum and uploads everything to their servers. It will need charging every five minutes.
Just replace AI with VR (Score:2)
A technology that the average person doesn't need and only a small handful actually want. This should end well.
So (Score:2)
It'll be practically useless, expensive, and look awful. Jony Ive does not have good designs. He is not good engineer. Talented, sure, but not good.
Will probably go nowhere (Score:2)
So you have a designer on board. Good enough. And a hype leader. That does not make a company.
Can you create anything meaningful that people will carry with them? Why not just use the cell phone? Are they going to create another device for people to carry? Or will this be a home unit, like a laptop or desktop or alexa?
Any way you slice it, the hardware interface isn't going to be the magic sauce. People will buy whatever works in their budget. I doubt that this new company can create the effect of Apple,