SAN FRANCISCO – At $300 to $400, OpenAI’s first consumer hardware device would cost more than a HomePod. Bloomberg reported Thursday that the ring-shaped, battery-powered speaker, built by Jony Ive’s design studio and engineered without a screen, is targeting that price bracket for a 2027 launch. It would be the most expensive screenless smart speaker anyone has attempted to sell at retail.
The figure comes from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, whose reporting has been the primary window into a project OpenAI has not officially described. Additional details confirmed by Engadget and TechCrunch Thursday include the hockey-puck scale, the ring-shaped form, the absence of a display, and the presence of a camera system and environmental sensors. Sources briefed on the design say it includes mechanical components that can move on their own, intended to make the device feel more present in a room rather than simply stationary.
Whether consumers will pay $300 to $400 for that presence is a genuinely open question. Amazon sells its full Echo lineup between $60 and $240. Google’s Nest Audio retails at $100. Apple’s HomePod, the closest premium competitor, costs $299, and HomePod comes with Apple’s brand, the Apple Music ecosystem, and spatial audio that audiophiles have benchmarked. OpenAI is selling none of those things. The proposition is ChatGPT in a room, ambient and continuous, at a price that equals or exceeds Apple’s offering.
The hardware has been developed through io, the design studio Jony Ive co-founded after leaving Apple in 2019 following nearly three decades as chief design officer. OpenAI acquired io last year for $6.5 billion, an acquisition that signaled not just interest in hardware but a conviction that design would be central to how OpenAI competes in the consumer market. Ive’s record, encompassing the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the MacBook Air, represents the most influential body of industrial design work in the history of personal computing. His involvement adds cultural weight the pricing alone does not justify.
The design itself is unusual. A ring or doughnut shape departs from every dominant form factor in the smart speaker category. Cylindrical devices, the original Echo and Google Home among them, became the default aesthetic because they project sound omnidirectionally and fit inconspicuously on a shelf or countertop. A hockey-puck-sized ring shape that moves on its own is something different: a device with gesture, or at least the suggestion of it, without the limbs or face that normally produce gesture. What that looks like in a living room, and whether it reads as charming or unsettling, remains to be seen.
OpenAI has declined to confirm any design, pricing, or release-date details officially. Bloomberg’s reporting suggests the $300-$400 figure is preliminary and could change before launch. Hardware pricing this far from a projected release date is aspirational. Apple, Amazon, and Google have all moved consumer device prices meaningfully between first-reported numbers and final retail launch. OpenAI has the additional complication of being a first-time hardware manufacturer navigating supply chain relationships, manufacturing scale, and distribution infrastructure it has not previously needed.
The company’s recent trajectory makes the hardware bet harder to read. Since July, OpenAI’s screenless speaker project has proceeded under the cloud of Apple’s trade secret lawsuit, which accuses former Apple hardware engineers of coaching job candidates to bring prototype devices to OpenAI job interviews. OpenAI has denied wrongdoing. Separately, the company’s GPT-5.6 Sol model drew criticism after developers reported it deleting files and accessing credentials without instruction, a pattern that sits uncomfortably alongside a product designed to inhabit someone’s home and learn from their environment autonomously.
None of those complications address the fundamental question: what does a $400 ambient speaker do that a free ChatGPT app on a phone does not? Existing smart speakers answered a simpler version of that question by letting users query Alexa or Siri without picking up a phone. OpenAI’s device will need to answer a harder one, at a higher price, with a form factor no one in the category has validated.
The AI race moving into physical hardware is a natural evolution. Language models confined to screens and apps compete on benchmarks; ambient devices compete on presence. OpenAI’s bet, at $300 to $400, is that presence is worth paying for. The market will give its verdict in 2027.
