Openai spent just $ 6.4 billion to acquire IO, Jony IVE’s beginning hardware venture. As a person who grew up idolizing the Jobs-Eive Partnership-MAC Addict subscription, Marathon on Sharathe, one of all they have ever done-bye I am the bait. But this step reveals Openai’s existential crisis: They play a game they have already lost.
Distribution kings have already won
Let’s be aware of the consumer AI Endgame: Google and Apple will dominate, with Microsoft afterwards on desktop and maybe eventually phones. They have what Openai Desperate Missing: Hardware Expertise, Distribution Channels and Capital Scale that even dwarves Openai’s eye -watering financing rounds.
Hardware is not just another Vollgrav – it’s a Vollgrav where your competitors have decades of experience and you learn to swim. To lean into your weakness is how to get your head carved by businesses that do this in their sleep. Apple sends hundreds of millions of devices annually. Google’s Android runs on billions. Openai acquires a company that is never sent anything.
The roads are not taken
There are trails that Openai could pursue, but not. NSFW applications. Deep camaraderie pushing over its disinfected chatgpt. Autonomous agents who live in discord servers slip into iMessages become actual digital beings that inhabit the Internet. But they do not touch these opportunities – too hard to make money, to dependent on competitors’ platforms, too frightening to consider the distribution options.
These niches are ripe for smaller players with higher risk, especially in open source. While Openai is chasing Apple’s Shadow, Scrappy Teams builds AI experiences that people actually want, but can’t get from buttoned business platforms.
The burning platform
Instead, Openai is stuck in a brutal position. They drive desperate traffic to their website. Building an app that needs Siris permission to exist. Pour money on the fire just to keep up with competitors who can afford to burn cash indefinitely. Google and anthropic match their capabilities, while Microsoft – their supposed partner – is called every effort.
$ 6.4 billion for IO is not strategy; It’s desperation. While very well can come out of it, the moment felt like bought and attention, under a company that built the fastest growing product over time in a very underrated way. When your competitive advantage evaporates and your partners start looking elsewhere, you intervene in everything that can create a Vollgrav. Even if the Vollgrav is in territory where you are hopelessly surpassed.
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The open alternative they do not take
Here’s what would make me master Openai: Make hardware and models really open. Let me personalize it, customize it, develop it, make it really mine. I will be able to trust this device that I have such an intimate relationship with. Let them create a platform where thousands of developers can build the AI experiences Openai is too risk-related to try.
I have no confidence in their business courage, even with Sam at the helm. They chase the same closed ecosystem playbook that Apple perfected decades ago, except without Apple’s benefits.
If I wanted to have a beautiful locked box with an AI inside I am waiting for Apple’s version. At least it works with my other devices.
The infrastructure imperative
AI is not another consumer product. For many, it is a life coach, a source of truth, a friend. This intimate relationship requires transparency, ownership and control that closed systems cannot provide.
Open Source AI projects are already matching or exceeding Openai’s performance while driving on local hardware. Elizaos, Mistral and other evidence that social development surpasses Corporate R&D. While Openai is burning billions on beautiful hardware, open societies solve real problems today.
The security argument for closed systems has collapsed. When AI becomes as critical as electricity or water, proprietary control becomes actively dangerous. Switzerland mandates open source for government systems because transparency enables security. Each overbreak in the Equifax scale reinforces this truth.
The beautiful box we could own
Here’s the opportunity to stare up the face: Be anti-apple. While Google and Apple Lock users in their ecosystems, Openai could build something revolutionary – really open hardware running really open models. Imagine IVe’s design genius that creates devices we can actually change, adapt and make our own.
This is not just idealism; It’s strategy. Openai can’t Out-Apple Apple or Out-Google Google. But they could pioneer something that neither established would dare to try: Premium hardware that respects the user’s sovereignty. Beautiful devices that developers can expand. AI companions that users really own.
The acquisition of $ 6.4 billion IO doesn’t have to be a defensive game. It could be the beginning of a new paradigm – an Openai leads by opening up rather than locking. They have IVes design expertise, Altman’s vision, and for a moment in the story where people are hungry for alternatives to Big Tech’s surveillance capitalism.
I want Openai to succeed. Not as another walled garden, but as proof that open systems can be as elegant as closed. This uses empowerment and beautiful design is not mutually exclusive. That AI’s future can live in a box we actually own, change and understand.
The choice is theirs: Become another also running in the closed ecosystem race, or pioneer the open future we desperately need.
