New details about OpenAI’s first consumer hardware device describe a doughnut-shaped, hockey-puck-sized smart speaker priced between $300 and $400, with no display, designed to serve as a voice-first AI companion that lives in the home. Bloomberg published a report offering the most specific look yet at a device OpenAI has been teasing for well over a year.
The OpenAI speaker is built around speaker grilles and microphones for voice interaction with ChatGPT, and includes a camera system and environmental sensors that give it awareness of its surroundings. It is battery-powered, making it easy to carry from room to room with one hand, and is made from premium metal. Moving components are intended to make it feel more responsive, while lights signal when it is listening. OpenAI plans to support natural, humanlike voice conversations through GPT-Live, similar to ChatGPT’s recently revamped voice mode.
The device is designed by Jony Ive, the former Apple chief design officer whose startup io Products was acquired by OpenAI last year, bringing several former Apple design team members onto the hardware project. OpenAI hopes to introduce the speaker later this year ahead of a broader 2027 launch, and the company has a wider hardware roadmap that reportedly includes smart glasses, a smart lamp, and earbuds.
OpenAI’s goal for the device is a humanlike AI companion that controls smart home accessories, answers questions, plays media, responds to messages, and learns more about the user over time to become more personalised and proactive. It is designed to work in different positions, whether held in the hand or sitting on furniture around the house.
At $300 to $400, the device carries a notable premium over existing smart speakers, and without a screen it will draw immediate comparisons to Apple’s HomePod mini, which costs significantly less and stays plugged in. Apple is also working on a home hub with a display expected this year, and a tabletop robot with a motorized arm that is not expected until 2027 at the earliest. None of Apple’s current or near-term products share the same portable, screenless, camera-equipped form factor OpenAI is targeting.
The device’s debut is complicated by Apple’s ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI, which alleges that OpenAI used Apple’s confidential information to develop its hardware, including gaining access to a proprietary metal finishing technique. Apple’s filing states that “OpenAI’s nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets.” People familiar with the project told Bloomberg that the device is different from anything Apple currently sells and is “unlikely” to violate Apple’s trade secrets, though that determination will ultimately rest with the courts. OpenAI filed a motion to dismiss Apple’s lawsuit this week.
