Instead, he stuck around at the tech company for nearly three decades and revolutionized consumer electronics. Now, he’s undertaking a new venture and looking to do the same with AI.
Still, Ive wasn’t happy, and in fact, he was planning to quit. Under then-CEO Gil Amelio, Ive felt the company was focusing too much on profits, and its designers were expected to spit out models for the outside of products, while the engineers made the inside of the products function as cheaply as possible.
While Jobs first looked outside of Apple for a design partner, he grew fond of Ive for his earnestness during a tour of Apple’s design department, wrote Isaacson.
“We discussed approaches to forms and materials,” Ive told Isaacson. “We were on the same wavelength. I suddenly understood why I loved the company.”
Jobs, for his part, developed a special bond with Ive despite their 12-year age difference, wrote Isaacson. The designer, who was supposed to report to the head of the hardware division, later became a frequent visitor to Jobs’ home and regularly had lunch with the CEO. The often highly critical Jobs even seemed to spare Ive the worst of his outbursts.
Their admiration was mutual. Of Ive, Jobs said to Isaacson: “He gets the big picture as well as the most infinitesimal details about each product. And he understands that Apple is a product company. He’s not just a designer.”
Ive stayed at Apple for nearly a decade following Jobs’ death, and departed the company in 2019 to help start a design firm, LoveFrom.
Two years ago, LoveFrom began working with OpenAI, and a year ago, Ive cofounded io, a startup focused on building AI-native devices.
Now, OpenAI is acquiring io in a $6.5 billion deal announced this past week, with Ive trying to build on his past design success with new AI-native devices.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
“Jony recently gave me one of the prototypes of the device for the first time to take home and I’ve been able to live with it, and I think it is the coolest piece that the world will have ever seen,” Altman said during a video announcing the new acquisition.
By teaming up with OpenAI, he may also be joining another dynamic duo, this time with Altman—another influential tech leader, but 28 years his junior.
