OpenAI and Jony Ive's First Gadget Is a Donut-Shaped AI Speaker for the Home

After a year of rumors, OpenAI and Jony Ive's first device has come into focus: a small, screenless, hockey-puck-sized AI speaker with cameras, sensors, and moving parts, priced around $300-$400 and expected in 2027.

After more than a year of rumors about what former Apple design chief Jony Ive and OpenAI were building together, the picture has finally sharpened. Their first consumer device is a small, screenless AI speaker roughly the size of a hockey puck, with a hole through the middle that gives it a donut shape.

New Atlas reports the battery-powered puck packs microphones, speakers, cameras, environmental sensors, status lighting, and mechanically moving parts that respond while it is listening and "thinking" — so it reacts physically instead of sitting inert until summoned. A built-in battery and separate charging base make it portable, not another speaker destined to live beside the toaster.

The Verge and TechCrunch peg the price at roughly $300 to $400, with a launch expected in 2027, according to Bloomberg. That sits well above budget Echo Dots and Nest Minis — a deliberate bet that a conversational AI that can see, hear, and move is worth more than a voice terminal for weather forecasts and kitchen timers.

It is not OpenAI's first piece of hardware — that was the Codex Micro, a 13-key programmable mini-keyboard for wrangling Codex agents — but it is the company's first serious attempt to put ChatGPT into a dedicated household device. The open question is what changes when the AI behind ChatGPT moves out of an app and takes up permanent residence in the room.