Overview

• At OpenAI’s developer conference, Sam Altman and Jony Ive confirmed they are developing a family of hardware devices, with Altman cautioning that building new form factors will take time.
• Reporting describes a palm-sized, screenless assistant that relies on microphones, cameras, and sensors, designed to be always on and context aware.
• Financial Times sources say securing sufficient compute to run OpenAI’s models at consumer scale remains a major blocker, creating budget pressures compared with rivals that already operate large assistant platforms.
• Engineers are still shaping the assistant’s voice and behavior to feel helpful without being intrusive or sycophantic, including deciding when it should speak and when to stop.
• Continuous sensing has raised privacy concerns, and despite reported manufacturing work with partners such as Luxshare, the previously expected 2026 timeline is now uncertain according to multiple reports.