SoftBank Group’s (9984.T) Masayoshi Son, former Apple (AAPL.O) iPhone designer Jony Ive, and Sam Altman, boss of ChatGPT’s creator OpenAI, are forming a seemingly exciting alliance. The three entrepreneurs want to build an “iPhone of artificial intelligence”, a gizmo that might spur the consumer use of AI like the smartphone did for the internet, the Financial Times reported on Thursday. SoftBank, which is flush with cash after the Arm IPO, is putting up over $1 billion into the project.
Several Big Tech companies have tried to build consumer devices that imitate the popularity of the iPhone, without much success. Meta Platforms (META.O)slashed prices of its reality headset Quest Pro by a third in March after shipments of the reality headsets fell in the first quarter of the year, data from Counterpoint Research shows.
Son and chums will face several obstacles that lie outside their control. Current mobile networks are still many years away from being able to quickly process the vast amounts of data needed for sophisticated models on the move: only 48% of mobile phones globally will run on 5G technology by 2027, according to Ericsson. And AI queries may drain mobile batteries quickly, as some iPhone users have discovered.
It’s unclear what kind of device Son, Ive and Altman have up their sleeves. But their vision may take a long time to come to fruition. (By Karen Kwok)
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