OpenAI’s First Device Is a $300-Plus Doughnut-Shaped Speaker: Report

OpenAI’s first consumer device will be a screenless smart speaker shaped like a doughnut and roughly the size of a hockey puck, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the work who asked not to be identified because it is confidential.

The battery-powered product is meant to be carried around the home in one hand and to work in different positions, whether held or set down on a surface. It will carry speaker grilles and microphones for conversation, lights to signal when it is listening, and a camera and sensors that feed information about the surroundings back to the AI.

Parts of the circular casing will move on their own to show when the device is responding, an effort to make the object feel more alive than competing stationary smart speakers where Amazon and Google dominate the market. OpenAI is positioning it as a computer built around AI, and expects people to lean on it through the day, working much like ChatGPT’s voice mode with more advanced models behind it.

Pricing has been discussed at $300 to $400 per unit, above most smart speakers and below a standard iPhone. The hardware was designed with Jony Ive’s LoveFrom studio and will use upscale materials including high-quality metal. OpenAI bought Ive’s device startup io for $6.4 billion in May 2025, and Decrypt reported in April that it is separately co-developing a smartphone chip with Qualcomm and MediaTek.

Apple’s lawsuit

The news comes after Ive’s former employer sued OpenAI in July in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California over the alleged misappropriation of hardware trade secrets, naming former engineer Chang Liu, former design executive Tang Yew Tan and io Products. Apple’s complaint cites a metal finishing technique it says OpenAI asked a longtime Apple supplier to develop for an upcoming product, though whether that refers to the speaker, a different device or a scrapped concept is unclear, according to Bloomberg.

OpenAI denies it. In a blog post on Monday, the company called the suit “careless, aggressive and oddly personal,” said Apple had confused two employees with similar surnames, and published emails and texts it says undercut the claims. It filed a motion to dismiss late Wednesday.

Apple has also asked for a preliminary injunction that could restrict OpenAI while the case proceeds, and which could complicate the launch. OpenAI has aimed to unveil the speaker this year and ship it in 2027, and is pressing ahead internally. A representative declined to comment on its product plans to Bloomberg.

OpenAI’s pitch for AI in the home has met with resistance online. Altman tweeted last week that a “cool use case” for its ChatGPT Work agent was connecting family calendars to generate a school-run podcast about one child’s soccer game and another’s birthday. Several critical replies drew more likes than the post itself, Fortune reported, objecting to software standing in for family conversation.