OpenAI's first AI hardware product will be a smart speaker that can recognize faces, observe, and help you shop, with a launch expected as early as the beginning of 2027.

Foreign media reveal OpenAI’s first hardware collaboration with former Apple design chief Jony Ive: a smart speaker with built-in camera and facial recognition, priced between $200 and $300, expected to launch as early as February 2027.
(Background recap: Breaking news! NVIDIA invests $100 billion to partner with OpenAI and build a 10GW AI data center, causing NVDA stock to jump 3.9%)
(Additional context: Amazon reportedly plans to invest billions in OpenAI and push its own Trainium chips to challenge NVIDIA’s dominance)

Table of Contents

• A face-recognizing, observing, shopping-assisting smart speaker
• Is $6.5 billion worth it? From iPhone thinking to AI thinking
• The brutal reality of the smart speaker market
• The graveyard and survivors of AI hardware
• Standards for “the coolest tech product in the world”

According to a report by The Information, OpenAI’s first hardware product developed in collaboration with Jony Ive will be a smart speaker with a built-in camera, priced at $200 to $300, expected to launch as early as February 2027. Future product lines include smart desk lamps and smart glasses, but these are not expected until 2028 or later.

This is the first concrete reveal of OpenAI’s hardware ambitions. Last July, OpenAI acquired io Products, founded by Ive, for about $6.5 billion in stock. Sam Altman openly described the product’s ambition: “This will be the coolest tech product in the world.”

A face-recognizing, observing, shopping-assisting smart speaker

According to reports, the core function of this smart speaker is not playing music or setting alarms, but “context awareness.” It will use its built-in camera and Face ID-like facial recognition to identify who is using it and what the environment looks like, then provide personalized responses accordingly.

The speaker is not just passively answering questions; it will observe user behavior patterns and proactively offer suggestions. For example, if it knows you have an early meeting tomorrow, it might suggest you go to bed earlier; users can also make purchases directly through the speaker.

In other words, OpenAI is designing an AI assistant placed in your living room that observes your life 24/7.

But this product also raises an obvious concern: privacy. A device with a camera, facial recognition, and behavior monitoring, placed at home, is functionally similar to a surveillance camera—only with the premise of “doing it for your own good.”

In 2019, Amazon faced controversy when Echo devices were exposed for human review of user recordings. OpenAI’s smart speaker, in terms of data collection depth, appears to surpass any existing smart home product.

Is $6.5 billion worth it? From iPhone thinking to AI thinking

The $6.5 billion acquisition of io Products is one of OpenAI’s largest investments to date (and paid in stock). To understand this move, we need to revisit a key point repeatedly emphasized by Altman: the next breakthrough in AI is not just about models, but about the “interface” between users and AI.

Currently, over 300 million people worldwide use OpenAI’s services via ChatGPT on their phones or computers. But phone screens are limiting: you have to actively open the app, type questions, wait for answers. Altman and Ive envision a form of “ambient intelligence,” where AI doesn’t need to be summoned; it observes, understands, and intervenes at the right moments.

However, the gap between concept and product is much larger than between concept and demo video. Ive’s illustrious history at Apple—iPhone, iMac, AirPods—is well known, but since leaving Apple in 2019, his entrepreneurial record is largely blank.

Before being acquired, io Products had not launched any consumer products. Reports also mention internal complaints within OpenAI about the secretive culture of LoveFrom (Ive’s design firm) and slow design revisions.

The brutal reality of the smart speaker market

The smart speaker market isn’t new. Amazon launched Echo in 2014, Google followed with Home in 2016, and Apple entered with HomePod in 2018. Over more than a decade, the story is: huge sales (over 500 million units globally), but thin profit margins, with user loyalty dependent on ecosystems rather than individual devices.

Amazon has long sold Echo at a loss or minimal profit to lock users into its retail and Prime ecosystem.

OpenAI has no retail ecosystem, no streaming music service, no smart home platform. Its only advantage is ChatGPT. But ChatGPT can already be used on any device. To persuade consumers to buy a $200–$300 smart speaker, it must offer an experience that “only this device can deliver.”

The camera, facial recognition, and behavior observation features might be OpenAI’s perceived differentiators, but these are also the features most likely to trigger consumer privacy concerns.

The graveyard and survivors of AI hardware

History is full of failed AI hardware attempts. Last year, Humane’s AI Pin (a $700 wearable device) nearly failed after a few months due to poor user experience and overheating issues.

Rabbit’s R1 ($199 pocket AI device) also quickly faded after initial hype. The common lesson: AI hardware can’t just be “a new shell for large language models”; it must solve a problem that smartphones can’t.

OpenAI’s advantage is that it doesn’t need to build AI capabilities from scratch—the voice mode of ChatGPT is already one of the most natural conversational AIs on the market.

Its disadvantage is that hardware success depends not only on AI intelligence but also on supply chain management, manufacturing quality, retail channels, and after-sales service—areas OpenAI has never ventured into. Whether the $6.5 billion Ive team can compensate for these shortcomings remains an unproven hypothesis.

Standards for “the coolest tech product in the world”

If this smart speaker launches as scheduled in February 2027, the market won’t care about Altman’s adjectives. It will ask three questions:

First, what can this device do that ChatGPT on my phone can’t?

Second, am I willing to let a camera-equipped device observe my living room 24/7?

Third, for $200–$300, is this a genuinely useful AI companion or just a beautiful talking ornament?