OpenAI and Jony Ive remove ‘io’ branding mentions over trademark lawsuit

If you recently looked up but couldn’t find OpenAI’s announcement video about its flashy partnership with Jony Ive, you are not alone. OpenAI has quietly pulled down the original blog post and the accompanying nine-minute video, just weeks after touting the $6.5 billion deal as a landmark step toward building new AI hardware. Here’s what happened.

The deal is still happening, just with a bit less branding

According to a statement given to The Verge, OpenAI says the content was taken offline following a court order tied to a “trademark lawsuit from Iyo, the hearing device startup spun out of Google’s moonshot factory.”

Here is OpenAI’s full statement to The Verge:

“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.”

Ive’s camp has already signaled it won’t back down either. In a statement to Bloomberg, a spokesperson for Ive said:

“This is an utterly baseless complaint and we’ll fight it vigorously”

Despite the disappearing web pages, both OpenAI and Ive say the partnership itself remains on track. The original deal, announced earlier this month, involves OpenAI acquiring Ive’s hardware startup, called IO Products and merging the team with OpenAI’s own research and engineering groups in San Francisco.

At the time, OpenAI framed the move as its biggest step toward designing consumer-facing AI devices with a more human-centered approach. Whether the final product will ship under the “io” name is now an open question.