OpenAI buys smartphone camera maker Glass Imaging for $300 million, report says — SkimNews
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- OpenAI acquired Glass Imaging in a deal worth over $300 million, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal; OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
- Glass Imaging, founded in 2019 and based in Los Altos, California, had previously raised about $30 million in funding from investors before the acquisition.
- The startup was founded by Ziv Attar and Tom Bishop, former Apple engineers who previously led the team that developed Apple's Portrait Mode.
- Unlike AI photo-editing tools, Glass Imaging uses neural networks trained on individual camera systems to improve image quality at the moment the shutter clicks.
- OpenAI is rumored to be developing its own hardware, including smartphones, earbuds, and AI companion devices — the Glass Imaging deal would bring specialized imaging talent into that pipeline.
- Earlier in 2025, CEO Sam Altman and designer Jony Ive revealed their device startup "io," which OpenAI acquired for $6.5 billion as part of the same hardware ambition.
Why it matters: OpenAI is spending serious money on imaging expertise with direct lineage to Apple's Portrait Mode team, a signal that its rumored consumer devices will lean on hardware-level camera AI rather than software post-processing. The $300M Glass Imaging deal follows the $6.5B io acquisition and gives OpenAI a Los Altos-based team of former Apple engineers to compete against the very smartphone makers it would enter the market against.
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