OpenAI buys smartphone camera maker Glass Imaging for $300 million, report says — SkimNews
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- OpenAI acquired smartphone camera startup Glass Imaging for over $300 million in a deal reported by The Wall Street Journal.
- Glass Imaging was founded in 2019 by Ziv Attar and Tom Bishop, former Apple engineers who led development of Apple's Portrait Mode, and had previously raised about $30 million in funding.
- Glass Imaging uses neural networks trained on individual camera systems to improve image quality at the moment of capture rather than editing photos after the fact.
- OpenAI is rumored to be developing its own hardware lineup, including smartphones, earbuds, and AI companion devices.
- Sam Altman and designer Jony Ive revealed earlier in 2025 that they had been collaborating on a device startup called io, which OpenAI acquired for $6.5 billion.
- OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Glass Imaging deal.
Why it matters: The deal brings OpenAI a team specialized in computational photography — the same discipline needed for the consumer hardware push Altman and Jony Ive are building toward via their $6.5 billion io venture. Glass Imaging's approach of using neural networks at the moment of capture, not post-processing, signals it wants AI baked directly into the camera pipeline of future devices.
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