OpenAI just took a step closer to building its own iPhone—Sam Altman privately briefed employees on a top-secret AI device being developed with legendary designer Jony Ive and backed by SoftBank’s billions.

No renderings, no public demos, just enough details to make you wonder if this thing could quietly shift how we interact with everything from ChatGPT to the apps on your phone.

We could be entering an era that's so redefining that Google search as well as Apple and Android devices see an end to their long-time dominance.

According to The Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch, Altman told OpenAI staff last month that the project is real, deep in development, and not a wearable.

That last part is key—after months of speculation around smart rings or pins (à la Humane or Rabbit), Altman’s vision seems to center on something bigger: a totally new kind of personal device.

Something that reinvents how we access AI in our daily lives—less screen, more ambient intelligence.

The project, first reported back in 2023, is being incubated under a separate company called “Human AI,” with Jony Ive’s LoveFrom studio handling the industrial design.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son is reportedly bankrolling the whole thing to the tune of up to $1 billion, giving the project serious fuel to challenge both Apple and Android ecosystems.

Details are still scarce, but insiders say this is about rethinking the phone itself—not by cloning it, but by stepping around it.

Think minimal UI. Think passive AI presence. Think no app juggling. Just a clean, always-on assistant that feels more like an extension of your mind than a bundle of notifications.

It’s also a strategic flex by OpenAI.

While Google and Apple race to bolt AI onto existing devices (hello, Gemini and Siri updates), Altman wants to build a platform from the ground up—one that’s AI-native from the first boot.

With ChatGPT already pushing into voice, vision, and multi-modal territory, this device could serve as the ultimate hardware shell for that expanding model.

No launch timeline yet. No name. But the fact that this is moving past the rumor mill and into internal briefings signals it’s not a vaporware play—it’s real, and it’s coming.

And depending on how it lands, it could do for AI what the iPhone did for the mobile web: shift the entire playing field.