OpenAI's $300 donut speaker is a bold bet that smart speakers weren't the problem

OpenAI's first consumer hardware is a hockey-puck-sized, screenless speaker with a doughnut shape, camera, microphones, moving parts, and lights. Priced at $300-$400, it won't ship until 2027. Jony Ive's LoveFrom studio is handling design, and the io team that merged into OpenAI is running the hardware effort. It's positioned as the first in a broader family of products eventually targeting smartphone replacement. Developers tracking the AI hardware space can follow how this category evolves on daily.dev.

Apple is alleging trade secret theft related to OpenAI's hardware ambitions. The lawsuit is complicated by the fact that Jony Ive, whose design studio LoveFrom is designing the OpenAI device, spent decades at Apple. LoveFrom remains an independent studio, but the connection creates awkward optics around the trade secret claims. Teams building at the intersection of AI and hardware products watch legal developments like this on daily.dev.