Former Apple designer Jony Ive, who began at the tech giant in 1992, is famous for his work creating the iPhone and iPad (among other products). Ive left Apple in 2019 to found his own companies, including “io,” an AI device startup, which was just purchased for $6.5 billion in an all-stock deal last month by ChatGPT-maker and AI behemoth, OpenAI.
Or was it? If you check OpenAI’s website or social media, you will no longer find any mention of it.
When the deal was announced, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Ive posted a video together announcing the partnership. Altman called one product he interacted with “the coolest piece of technology the world has ever seen,” while Ive complimented Altman, calling him “a visionary.”
Now, the page is blank except for the text: “This page is temporarily down due to a court order following a trademark complaint from iyO about our use of the name ‘io.’ We don’t agree with the complaint and are reviewing our options.”
Spokespeople for Ive and OpenAI told Bloomberg that the public content was removed because of a recently filed trademark lawsuit by a company called IYO Inc., which also builds AI devices and wants to bar OpenAI from using the “io” name.
“This is an utterly baseless complaint and we’ll fight it vigorously,” a spokesperson for Ive said on Sunday, per Bloomberg.
But until then, the launch of the “coolest” tech ever is going to have to wait.
