OpenAI's first hardware collaboration with former Apple design chief Jony Ive is a doughnut-shaped, battery-powered smart speaker roughly the size of a hockey puck, expected to launch in 2027 at a price above $300. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported the details, describing a display-less device built around an advanced version of ChatGPT's voice mode. It is the clearest picture yet of what Sam Altman and Ive have been building since OpenAI absorbed Ive's hardware startup last year.
The device is designed to be carried around the home with one hand, closer in form factor to Amazon's discontinued Tap speaker than to anything on Apple's current shelf. Gurman describes it as a battery-powered puck with no screen, meant to sit anywhere in the house and answer back when spoken to.
“essentially a smart speaker without a display”— Mark Gurman, Bloomberg reporter
Physically, it will not look generic. Gurman reports the device will have moving parts that animate on their own to signal when it is listening or responding, along with lights, a camera system, and additional sensors. That is a sharp departure from the static, monolithic industrial language that has defined smart speakers since Amazon's original Echo shipped in 2014.
Key facts
- 01OpenAI's first Jony Ive-designed device is a doughnut-shaped, battery-powered smart speaker roughly the size of a hockey puck.
- 02The device is expected to launch in 2027 at a price above $300, per Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
- 03It will have no display but will include moving parts, lights, a camera system, and other sensors.
- 04Voice interaction will run on more advanced models than ChatGPT's current smartphone voice mode.
- 05OpenAI has said the speaker is the first in a planned family of devices for its AI chatbots.
Pricing above $300 puts it well outside the commodity smart-speaker segment, where Amazon and Google routinely sell hardware below cost to seed their assistants. OpenAI does not have that subsidy logic — it sells ChatGPT subscriptions, not ads or e-commerce, so the hardware needs to carry some of its own economics. A price north of $300 also signals that OpenAI is targeting the device more as a premium consumer object than a mass-market impulse buy.
The voice experience is the core pitch. Gurman writes that the speaker will run more advanced models than the ChatGPT voice mode available today on smartphones, aimed at humanlike back-and-forth conversation. That framing matters because ChatGPT's advanced voice mode is already the most-used real-time voice AI on the market, and the puck is essentially a dedicated appliance for that interaction pattern.
“work similarly to the company's ChatGPT voice mode on smartphone apps, but with more advanced models for humanlike interactivity”— Mark Gurman, Bloomberg reporter
The device is meant to be the first in what OpenAI president Greg Brockman has previously described as a family of devices for the company's chatbots. A speaker is the natural opening move: it validates the voice-first interaction model without asking consumers to wear anything, carry a second phone, or trust a camera on their face.
The Ive connection also sharpens the competitive picture with Apple. OpenAI and Apple are currently in litigation, with Apple accusing OpenAI of trade-secret misappropriation tied to former Apple employees — a case we covered earlier this month when OpenAI moved to dismiss and called the complaint rotten to its core. Gurman writes that the new device will look and feel nothing like an Apple product, which reads less as a design note than a legal one.
There are open questions the report does not answer. It is unclear whether the speaker will run models locally, stream to OpenAI's servers, or use a hybrid approach — a decision that shapes both latency and privacy. Camera systems on always-listening home devices have a long history of consumer resistance, from Amazon's Echo Look to Meta's Portal, and OpenAI will have to explain what the sensors are for. A 2027 ship date also means the specs described today are not final; hardware roadmaps at this stage routinely slip six to twelve months, and voice-AI models will be markedly better by launch.
For OpenAI, the strategic logic is straightforward. The company already commands the largest paid consumer AI subscriber base and one of the largest free user bases in software. A branded hardware endpoint gives it a direct relationship with users that does not depend on Apple's App Store, Google's Play billing, or Microsoft's Windows shell. If even a small fraction of ChatGPT's user base buys a $300 puck, the device becomes a meaningful revenue line and, more importantly, a distribution moat that competitors on Android and iOS cannot easily replicate.
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