OpenAI is building a "family of devices" for its AI models, president Greg Brockman said in an interview with Joanna Stern posted July 29, 2026. The framing is broader than the single smart speaker OpenAI has been rumored to launch in 2027, and broader than the wearable comparisons drawn earlier to the Humane AI pin. Brockman declined to name a specific product or ship date, saying only that "you can expect them soon."
“building a family of devices”— Greg Brockman, OpenAI president
The remark is the clearest confirmation yet that OpenAI's hardware ambitions extend beyond one flagship device. The company has been working with former Apple designer Jony Ive on a dedicated AI hardware effort, and speculation has run from a screen-free pocket device to an ambient home speaker. Brockman's phrasing suggests OpenAI is planning a product line, not a single object, and the strategic implication is that the company sees ChatGPT running natively across several form factors rather than being confined to phones and browsers.
The interview landed against the backdrop of Apple's lawsuit against OpenAI, which centers on OpenAI's hiring from Apple's hardware and design ranks, including Ive. Asked whether the litigation would slow the hardware roadmap, Brockman kept the answer narrow. "We are focused on our own development and technology," he said.
Key facts
- 01OpenAI president Greg Brockman said the company is building a 'family of devices' for its AI models, not a single product.
- 02Brockman declined to confirm a rumored 2027 smart speaker launch, saying only that new devices are coming 'soon.'
- 03Asked about Apple's lawsuit against OpenAI over hires including former Apple designer Jony Ive, Brockman said the company has 'no interest in other companies' trade secrets.'
- 04Brockman predicted voice will replace typing for the 'vast majority' of computer interactions.
- 05OpenAI is developing 'verifiable, auditable guarantees' that only its AI, not employees, can review private user data in features like ChatGPT's temporary chat.
He then went further on the trade-secrets question, pushing back on the premise of the suit. The framing matters because Apple's complaint has been read in some quarters as a durable overhang on OpenAI's hardware plans. Brockman's answer says the opposite — that the company views its device work as independently sourced and does not expect the case to reshape the roadmap.
“We have no interest in other companies' trade secrets. We are plenty innovative. We are thinking about things from our own angle.”— Greg Brockman, OpenAI president
The bigger product thesis Brockman laid out is about input, not form factor. He said he expects users to talk to their computers rather than type for the "vast majority of what we do." That is a specific claim, and it is the operating assumption behind almost every hardware bet OpenAI is making: if voice becomes the primary interface, the device stops being a screen and starts being a microphone with good judgment about when to listen.
Brockman acknowledged the obvious social problem with that thesis — offices full of people talking to their machines out loud — and pointed to the soundproof "beak" masks that have started to appear as evidence of demand pressure. He said he does not use one himself, but noted that "it really shows you where there's product market fit," even while conceding the masks are not the answer. The point was that the friction is real enough that people are already inventing bad solutions for it.
The interview also touched on trust, which has become a live problem for OpenAI as ChatGPT absorbs more sensitive personal data. Brockman said the company is developing technical mechanisms to give users "verifiable, auditable guarantees" that only the AI itself, and not OpenAI employees, can access user data in modes such as ChatGPT's temporary chat. He did not detail the cryptographic or systems approach, but the framing — auditable guarantees rather than policy promises — is the language of confidential compute and attestation, not of privacy notices.
What Brockman did not say is as informative as what he did. He would not confirm the 2027 smart speaker, would not confirm a wearable, would not give a price band, and would not describe the software stack that will run on the devices. For a company that has been unusually chatty about model roadmaps, the hardware silence is deliberate. OpenAI appears to be preserving optionality on form factor while committing publicly to the direction.
The counterweight is that OpenAI has never shipped a consumer hardware product, and the Humane AI pin is the recent cautionary tale for exactly this category — an ambitious voice-first device that failed to find a workflow users preferred over their phones. Apple's lawsuit adds a second constraint, since discovery and injunction risk on hires and design work can slow a hardware program even when the underlying claims are contested. Brockman's "soon" is doing a lot of work in an industry where hardware programs routinely slip by a year or more.
OpenAI's move into a device family reframes the competitive map. If the company controls both the model and the endpoint, it stops paying rent to Apple and Google for every ChatGPT session that runs on their operating systems, and it can ship voice-first experiences that iOS and Android will not natively enable. That is the prize worth the legal exposure and the execution risk, and it is why Brockman's phrasing — a family, not a product — is the sentence in the interview that matters most for OpenAI's next two years.
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