Apple's former CEO John Sculley confident about AI-hardware that Jony Ives is developing with OpenAI: 'He's the one who…'

Former Apple CEO John Sculley has expressed confidence in the AI-hardware devices being developed by former Apple design chief Jony Ive in partnership with OpenAI . Speaking at the Zeta Live conference, Sculley pointed to Ive's design history as an indicator of future success with the new devices. Talking about Ives, Sculley said: “He's the one who actually designed and built the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. If there's anyone who is probably going to be able to bring that dimension to the LLM, in this case OpenAI, it's probably going to be Jony Ive, working with Sam Altman .”

OpenAI recently acquired Jony Ive’s device startup for more than $6 billion. At OpenAI's DevDay conference this week, Ive stated that the hardware his team is developing aims to address some of the issues that smartphones and tablets have created since their launch. The partnership seeks to combine Ive’s hardware design experience with OpenAI’s large language model (LLM) technology.


What ex-Apple CEO said about the company’s position in AI race


At the conference, Sculley also noted Apple is encountering a significant new competitor in the age of AI. He described OpenAI as “the first real competitor” Apple has had “in many decades.”

“AI has not been a particular strength for them,” Sculley said about Apple. The company also appears to have fallen behind in the AI race, with fewer consistent product updates compared to firms like OpenAI, Google, Amazon, and Meta . It has also faced setbacks, such as delays in revamping its AI-powered assistant Siri earlier this year.

“In the agentic era, we don't need a lot of apps; it can all be done with smart agents,” Sculley said, referring to AI capable of autonomously performing complex tasks.

“When we had apps at the centre of everything, it was selling tools, selling products. When you think of subscription, it's about people paying for something as long as they need it,” Sculley added. According to him, subscriptions provide a stronger business model.

Sculley also commented on reports suggesting that Apple's current CEO, Tim Cook , may be considering retirement. He said that whoever succeeds Cook will need to guide Apple’s shift from the apps era to the agentic era.