Following OpenAI’s multibillion-dollar acquisition of io Products – the hardware venture led by former Apple Chief Design Officer Jony Ive – the technology world has been watching closely for details about how the AI giant intends to translate its software dominance into a physical product. The first credible account of that product has now emerged, and it departs significantly from anything currently on the consumer market.
A Hockey-Puck-Sized Ring with No Screen
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who obtained details from sources familiar with the project, the device will adopt a ring-shaped – or doughnut-shaped – form factor roughly equivalent in size to a hockey puck. The design is a deliberate departure from every established convention in the smart speaker category.
Key Hardware Specifications
Several design choices distinguish this device from anything in the current market.
No Display
The device carries no screen of any kind. All interaction occurs through voice and physical movement rather than a visual interface.
Ambient Awareness
An integrated camera system, microphone array, and suite of environmental sensors allow the device to continuously feed visual and auditory context from its surroundings directly to the underlying AI model. The device is designed to understand not just what a user says, but where they are and what is happening around them.
Dynamic Mechanical Components
To make the AI assistant feel genuinely alive rather than inert, the device incorporates moving mechanical parts and dynamic lighting. These physical animations are intended to communicate whether the assistant is listening, processing, or responding – conveying presence through motion rather than a screen.
Portable and Battery-Powered
The device is built for portability. An integrated battery allows users to carry it freely around the home with one hand, rather than anchoring it to a power outlet like a conventional smart speaker.
The Price: $300 to $400, Targeting 2027
Jony Ive’s reputation for uncompromising industrial craft carries a predictable premium. Internal discussions at OpenAI are reportedly centering on a retail price between $300 and $400, with a planned commercial launch in 2027. The current pricing conversation is understood to serve a dual purpose: gauging early consumer appetite and preserving flexibility to adjust the cost structure before the product reaches shelves.
Not a Smart Speaker – A Physical AI Companion
Measured against conventional smart speaker benchmarks, a $300 to $400 price point is an extraordinarily ambitious ask. Amazon’s Echo and Google Nest lines have built their market position on affordable accessibility. Even Apple’s HomePod – the premium end of the category – rarely commands such figures.
But OpenAI appears entirely uninterested in competing within that frame. The convergence of a portable puck-sized body, camera-based situational awareness, and physically animated feedback suggests the company is pursuing something categorically different: a device conceived not as a household appliance, but as a pervasive AI companion – a ChatGPT presence that accompanies a user through daily life rather than remaining fixed in a corner of the kitchen.
The Central Question
The proposition’s most formidable obstacle is one of perceived value. Will consumers pay a substantial premium for a device that has no screen and amounts, in hardware terms, to a microphone and a lens in an elegant enclosure?
If the experience OpenAI delivers – in voice understanding, visual comprehension, and real-time contextual reasoning – does not demonstrably surpass what a smartphone already offers, the company’s ambitious hardware vision may encounter a market that proves stubbornly resistant. The investment is enormous. The expectations will need to match it.
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