Openai just spent $ 6.4 Billion Getting IONascent hardware venture by Jony Ive. As someone who grew up in the idol of the work-ive-mac addict subscription cooperation, marathon in shareware, one of all they did-I understood the attraction. But this move shows Openai’s existing crisis: they are playing a game that has been gone.
Won the distribution of kings
Let’s be clear about Consumer AI Endgame: Google and Apple will dominate, with Microsoft walking on the desktop and maybe, ultimately, phones. They have what Openai is desperate to lack: hardware expertise, distribution channels, and capital size that the dwarfs even the Openai eye funding cycles.
Hardware is not just another MOAT – this is a moat where your competitors have decades of experience and you learn to swim. Leaning your weakness is how you can get rid of your heads of companies doing this in their sleep. Apple is sending ways -millions of devices annually. Google’s Android runs in Billion -Billion. Openai gets a company that never sent anything.
Not taken off roads
There are paths that Openai can pursue but no. NSFW applications. Deep integration that drives across the sanitized chatgpt. Autonomous agents who live on discord servers, slide to iMessages, have become actual digital creatures living on the Internet. But they do not handle these opportunities – it is difficult to make money, too dependent on the competitors’ platforms, too scary to contemplate the possibilities of distribution.
These niches are ripe for smaller, higher risk players, especially open resources. While Openai is chasing Apple’s shadow, Scrappy teams build AI experiences that people really like but are not available from the putton corporate platforms.
The burning platform
Instead, Openai is stuck in a brutal position. They are desperate to drive traffic to their website. The construction of an app that requires Siri’s permission to exist. Pouring money into the fire just to keep up with competitors who can burn cash forever. Google and Anthropic match their capabilities while Microsoft – their supposed partner – possesses every bet.
$ 6.4 billion for IO is not an approach; This is desperation. While many well-being can come here, the moment felt as purchased, under a company that built the fastest growing product of all time in a very undersstated way. When your competitive advantage is evaporated and your partners start looking elsewhere, you understand anything that can create a moat. Even that moat is in the territory where you have no hope.
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The open alternative they will not take
Here’s what the Openai champion will make me: Make hardware and models open. Let me personalize it, customize it, build it, make it really me. I wish this device can be trusted that I have an intimate relationship with. Let them create a platform where thousands of developers can develop AI Openai experiences are too risky-averse to try.
I have no confidence in their corporate courage, even with Sam in the rudder. They are pursuing the same closed ecosystem playbook that Apple made fun of decades ago, unless there were no Apple benefits.
If I wanted a nice locked-box with an AI inside, I would wait for the Apple version. At least it will work on my other devices.
The infrastructure required
AI is not another consumer product. For many, it is a coach of life, a source of truth, a friend. This intimate relationship requires transparency, ownership, and control that closed systems cannot provide.
AI’s open-source projects match or exceed Openai performance while running local hardware. Elizaos, Mistral, and others prove that community development is Outpaces Corporate R&D. As Openai burns billions -billions of good hardware, open communities solve real problems today.
The security argument for closed systems is collapsed. When AI becomes critical such as electricity or water, the control control becomes actively dangerous. Switzerland regulates the open-source for government systems because transparency enables security. Each Equifax-Scale violation reinforces this fact.
The beautiful box we can hold -owner
Here’s the opportunity to stare at the face-to-face: be anti-apple. While Google and Apple users are locking their ecosystems, Openai can build a revolutionary – truly open hardware running truly open models. Imagine Ive’s design genius that creates devices that we can really change, customize, and make ourselves.
This is not just idealism; approach it. OpenAI cannot apply Apple or Out-Google Google. But they can pioneer something incumbent does not intensify -an attempt to attempt: Premium hardware that respects user sovereignty. Good devices that developers can expand. AI companions who truly own users.
IO’s $ 6.4 billion acquisition does not have to be a defensive play. It can be the beginning of a new paradigm – one where Openai leads by opening rather than locking. They have excellence in Ive’s design, Altman’s vision, and a moment in history where people are hungry for successors in monitoring big Big Tech monitoring.
I want Openai to succeed. Not as another wall with a wall, but as proof that open systems can be as elegant as those closed. User strengthening and good design are not both exclusive. That the future of AI can live in a box that we really own, change, and understand.
The choice is to them: Also a closed ecosy system, or pioneer is the open future we need.
