AI Age Brings The Biggest Acquhire – Crazy Stupid Tech
crazystupidtech.com/2025/05/21/open-ai-buys-jony-ive
What Jamie wrote
Om Malik thoughts on OpenAI buying io. His framing as an "acquihire" is actually right, and $6.5 billion for that is wild. That is $118M for each of the 55-people at io. Wow. It also sets up further options.
In 2021, OpenAI was valued at $6.1 billion. Now they are buying a 55-person company with a mystery product for $6.5 billion. This talk of the new yet to be announced device will allow Altman to raise a few more billion dollars, and raise the valuation of OpenAI to hitherto unprecedented heights, and in turn acquire other vectors to further his ambition.
It does seem worth noting here how wild it is that this is all in private markets. The fact that this amount of money is moving around without a public listing, and notably without any public investors being able to participate in the upside, is eye popping.