Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 05/22 – OpenAI Acquihires Jony Ive!

Episode Date: May 22, 2025

Is this is biggest acquihire of all time? Jony Ive is joining OpenAI to the tune of $6.5 billion dollars. And what is he going to do there? Create hardware devices that Sam Altman expects to ship 100 million of. Why Google has a unique advantage in the AI race. Why Signal is blocking Recall. And why is weather forecasting AI’s next big trick? Sponsors: CornbreadHemp.com/ride and code RIDE Links: Former Apple Design Guru Jony Ive to Take Expansive Role at OpenAI (WSJ) What Sam Altman Told OpenAI About the Secret Device He’s Making With Jony Ive (WSJ) Google has a big AI advantage: it already knows everything about you (The Verge) “Microsoft has simply given us no other option,” Signal says as it blocks Windows Recall (Ars Technica) A.I. Is Poised to Revolutionize Weather Forecasting. A New Tool Shows Promise. (NYTimes) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech meme right home for Thursday, May 22nd, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough today. Is this the biggest aquaer of all time? Johnny Ive is joining Open AI to the tune of $6.5 billion. And what is he going to do there? Create hardware devices that Sam Altman expects to ship 100 million of. Why Google has a unique advantage in the AI race, why Signal is blocking recall, and why is weather forecasting AI's next big trick?

Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Absolutely seismic earth-shattering news for the world of tech, Johnny Ive, the design guru who worked with Steve Jobs to make the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple Watch, is joining Open AI to create hardware. Open AI is buying I-O, Johnny Ives' secretive AI startup for around $6.5 billion in stock. Ive and Love From will remain independent, but takeover design for all of Open AI. Quoting the journal, OpenAI chief executive officer Sam Altman and Ives design firm Love From have been working on a new device that will move consumers beyond screens according to people familiar with the matter. They have been collaborating for two years on a closely guarded project considering options including headphones and other devices with cameras the people said. The former Apple employee's work at OpenAI will extend across all the company's ventures from future versions of chatGBT to audio features, its app and other products, according to people familiar with the matter. matter. London-born I've left Apple in 2019 to found Love From, a design firm that's worked for

Ferrari, Airbnb, and the luxury Italian fashion firm, Monclair. I've also leads I.O., a company founded last year to design and develop a new family of AI-powered products. As part of an unusual deal announced Wednesday, Open AI will acquire I.O. in an all-equity deal that values it at $6.5 billion. Open AI acquired a 23% stake in IO late last year. People from the with the matter said, OpenAI's startup fund also invested at the time, end quote. While not yet publicly confirmed by IVE or Sam Altman, sources say their collaboration aims to reduce reliance on screens, as we said. Around 55 I.O. employees, including engineers, scientists and product specialists, will join Open AI, while Ives' design firm Lovefrum will

remain independent. Under the deal, Love From will both serve OpenAI as a design partner and receive equity in the company. The transaction is, is expected to close this summer pending regulatory approval. In a joint statement, Ivan Aldman emphasized that their partnership evolved from a longstanding friendship and creative synergy. Altman, a vocal critic of screen addiction, has long admired Apple and Steve Jobs, and was reportedly enthusiastic about collaborating when Apple began exploring AI partnerships for its Apple intelligence rollout. I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this moment. I've said in a statement, Altman said,

He hopes the team can, quote, bring some of the delight, wonder, and creative spirit that I first felt using an Apple computer 30 years ago, end quote. So this is obviously a fairly big story, well worth a deeper dive. And thankfully overnight, more info has come out. First, there was a video and a letter signed Sam and Johnny, where they say they will be joined by Scott Cannon, Evans Hanky, and Tang Tan to develop new products inside OpenAI. The video is fairly cringe, if you ask me, some serious humane-pin vibes there. The journal has heard a leaked recording where Sam Altman told his staff that OpenAI aims to ship 100 million AI companion devices meant for everyday life and to release the first of these devices by late next year.

Quote, employees have, quote, the chance to do the biggest thing we've ever done as a company here, Altman said after announcing OpenAI's plans to purchase Ives startup named I. and give him an expansive, creative, and design role. Altman suggested the $6.5 billion acquisition has the potential to add $1 trillion in value to OpenAI, according to a recording reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. In the meeting, I've noted how closely he worked with Steve Jobs, before the Apple co-founder died in 2011. With Altman, quote, the way that we clicked and the way that we've been able to work together

has been profound for me, I've said. Altman and I've offered a few hints at the secret project they have been working on, the product will be capable of being fully aware of a user's surroundings and life, will be unobtrusive, able to rest in one's pocket or on one's desk, and will be a third-core device a person would put on a desk after a MacBook Pro and an iPhone. The journal earlier reported that the device won't be a phone, and that Ivan Altman's intent is to help wean users from screens. Altman said that the device isn't a pair of glasses,

and that I've had been skeptical about building something to wear on the body. I've referred to a new design movement. Altman said it would amount to a family of devices, bringing up his fondness for how Apple has long integrated its hardware and software offerings. Altman told OpenAI staff that stealth will be important for their ultimate success to avoid competitors copying the product before it's ready. For months, Ives' team has been speaking with vendors who will be able to ship the device at scale. We're not going to ship 100 million devices literally on day one. Altman said predicting that OpenAI would ship that large quantity of high-quality devices, quote, faster than any company has ever shipped 100 million of something new before.

Altman said the goal is to release a device by late next year, end quote. The journal also says that Altman and Lovefram have been working for two years on devices that move consumers beyond screens like headphones and other devices with cameras. Quote, IOS staff of roughly 55 engineers, scientists, researchers, physicists, and product development specialists will become part of Open AI while LoveFrum continues to operate independently. OpenAI will be a customer of Lovefram and Lovefram will receive a stake in OpenAI, people familiar with the matter said. The companies expect the transaction to close this summer pending regulatory approval. OpenAI's acquisition of I.O. points to its growing ambitions as a more consumer-centric company focused on mass market products and impact.

Altman recently hired Facebook and Instacart veteran Fiji Simo, an operations focus executive who's tasked with helping the company become a profitable and publicly traded company. While much of Ives' work at Apple revolved around the specific look and feel of products in the physical world, he also took greater responsibility for software issues on certain devices toward the end of his tenure there, end quote. Yeah, one final take on this. I think this is very worrying news for Apple, not just the aqua-hiring of Ive. I mean, it's possible Johnny doesn't really have his fastball anymore when it comes to product design, but what I think is bad for Apple is that with all the movement in the smart glasses space, which, remember, is primarily designed to function as an AI device.

And now this, clearly going after the post-smartphone space, I mean, Apple clearly envisions a post-Iphone world, a post-Iphone device or set of devices, and yet, there couldn't be a worse time for them to be so far behind with their own AI. Speaking of, Emma Roth in The Verge points out a unique advantage Google has in the AI race that was made obvious at I.O. Google is tapping its users' data to give its AI models an advantage over OpenA. and Anthropic, starting with its opt-in Gemini with personalization feature.

Quote, during Google I.O. on Tuesday, Google introduced something called personal context, which will allow Gemini models to pull relevant information from across Google's apps as long as it has your permission. One way Google is doing this is through Gmail's personalized smart replies, the AI-generated messages that you can use to quickly reply to email. To make these AI responses sound authentically like you, Gemini will pour over your previous emails and even your Google Drive files to craft a reply tailored to your conversation. The response will even incorporate your tone, the greeting you use the most, and even favorite word choices according to Google. As an example, Google says if you're chatting with a friend about a road trip, Gemini can search through your emails and files, allowing it to find hotel reservations and an itinerary you put together.

It can then suggest a response that incorporates relevant information. That Google CEO Sundar Pichai said during the keynote may even help you be a better friend. It seems Google plans on bringing personal contacts outside Gemini 2 as its blog post announcing the feature says. You can imagine how helpful personal contacts will be across Search Gemini and more. Google said in March that it will eventually let users connect their YouTube history and photos library to Gemini 2. The breadth of data that Google has access to could put Gemini far ahead of Open AIs chat. GTPT, which starts with a blank slate when it encounters a new user. Instead of having an idea of where someone might like to shop their favorite foods or how they typically compose their emails,

chatGPT will have to field several responses before it can start referring to its memories and old conversations. The same is true for other AI chatbots without Google's vast swaths of data, such as Anthropics Claude. If it's given permission, Gemini can have access to all of this information and more right out of the gate. That sets it up to be an even more helpful AI assistant that you don't even need to have a previous interaction with for it to, quote, know you, end quote. Signal says its desktop app will block Windows from taking screenshots of it by default due to that new Windows feature Recall and its associated privacy risks. Users can enable screenshots in settings if they want to, but quoting Ars Technica. Although Microsoft made several adjustments over the past 12 months in response to critical feedback,

The revamped version of Recall still places any content that's displayed within privacy-preserving apps like Signal at risk. Signal officials wrote Wednesday, as a result, we are enabling an extra layer protection by default on Windows 11 in order to help maintain the security of Signal desktop on that platform, even though it introduces some usability trade-offs. Microsoft has simply given us no other option, end quote. When Recall was introduced in May 2024, security and privacy practitioners quickly warned that it created undue risks for both Windows users and those using, other platforms who interact with Windows users. Many of the criticisms were based on specific designs. Recall was turned on by default. Screenshots and OCR data were stored in plain text, where it could be accessed by any app with user system rights. It provided few granular tools to limit the type of content

that was sucked into its massive vacuum bag of data. After facing one of its worst PR disasters and recent memory, Microsoft pulled recall out of Windows 11 previews a few months after adding it. Then, last month, Microsoft reintroduced a significantly overhauled version of the tool. As R's senior technology reporter Andrew Cunningham, painstakingly documented a few weeks later, the refurbished recall went to great lengths to correct some of the poorly thought-through designs in the first iteration. Recall was now opt-in rather than on by default. The database storing recall data was now encrypted, with the keys secured in a secure enclave separate from Windows, and the tool now provided some level of user control to limit the type of content in end.

But the changes only go so far in limiting the risk recall poses. As I pointed out, when recall is turned on, it indexes Zoom meetings, emails, photos, medical conditions, and yes, signal conversations, not just with the user, but anyone interacting with that user without their knowledge or consent. With no API for blocking recall in the Windows desktop version signal is instead invoking an API Microsoft provides for protecting copyrighted material. App developers can turn on the DRM setting to prevent Windows from taking screenshots of copyrighted content displayed in the app. Signal is now repurposing that API to add an extra layer of privacy.

Signals move will lessen the chances of recall permanently indexing private messages, but it also has its limits. The measure only provides protection when all parties to a chat, at least those using the Windows desktop version haven't changed the default settings. Signal users who want to disable the block, for instance, to preserve a conversation for their records or make use of accessibility features for site impaired users will have to change settings inside their desktop version to enable screenshots, end quote. And finally today, weather forecasting keeps coming up as something that might be completely transformed by AI and soon.

Quoting the Times, artificial intelligence holds promise to deliver more accurate forecast quickly, and tech companies including Google, Nvidia, and Huawei, have produced AI-based forecasting models. The latest entrant is Aurora, an AI weather model from Microsoft, and it stands out for several reasons, according to a report published Wednesday in the journal Nature. It's already in use at one of Europe's largest weather centers where it's running alongside other traditional and AI-based models. The Aurora model can make accurate 10-day forecasts at smaller scales than many other models

the paper reports. And it was built to handle not only weather, but any Earth system with data available. That means it can be trained relatively easily to forecast things like air pollution and wave height in addition to weather events like tropical cyclones. Users could add almost any system they like down the road. For instance, one startup has already honed the model to predict renewable energy markets. I'm most excited to see the adoption of this model as a blueprint that can add more Earth systems to the prediction pipeline, said Paris Perdicaris,

a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who led the development of Aurora while working at Microsoft. It's also fast, able to return results in seconds as opposed to the hours that non-AI models can take. Traditional models, the basis of weather forecasting over the last 70 years, use layers of complex mathematical equations to represent the physical world. The sun, heating the planet, winds and ocean currents swirling around the globe, clouds forming, and so on. Researchers then add real weather data and ask the computer models to predict what will happen next. Human forecasters look at results from many of these models and combine them with their own experience to tell the public what scenario is most likely. Final forecasts are

ultimately made by a human expert, Dr. Peridkaris said. That is true for AI-based forecast, too. This system has worked well for decades, but the models are incredibly complex and require expensive of supercomputers. They also take many years to build, making them difficult to update and hours to run, slowing down the forecasting process. Artificial intelligence weather forecasting models are faster to build, run, and update. Researchers feed the models huge amounts of weather and climate data and train them to recognize patterns. Then based on those patterns, the model predicts what comes next. But the AI models still need equation-based models and real-world data for their starting points and for reality checks. It doesn't know the laws of physics, so it could make up

something completely crazy, said Amy McGovern, a computer scientist and meteorologist at the University of Oklahoma, who was not involved in the study. So most, but not all AI weather forecasting models still rely on data and the physics-based models in some capacity, and human forecasters need to interpret results carefully. Dr. Perdiakaris and his collaborators built Aurora using this method, training it on data from physics-based models and then making purely AI predictions, but they didn't want it to be limited to weather. So they trained it on multiple Big Earth system datasets, creating a broad background of artificial expertise. Aurora is an important step toward more versatile forecasting systems, said Sebastian Engelke, a professor of statistics at the

University of Geneva, who was not involved in the study. The model's flexibility and resolution are its most novel contributions, he said, end quote. Nothing more for you today other than to ask the question is the self-titled album by Elastica, the greatest debut album of all time. There's not a bad song on there. Talk to you tomorrow.