OpenAI's first hardware product: an AI headset, aiming for 50 million in sales this year.

OpenAI, well-known for its artificial intelligence technology, is finally venturing into the hardware field, and it's going head-to-head with Apple right from the start.

Recently, there have been more and more news about OpenAI's hardware.

Early this morning, the digital blogger @zhihuipikachu revealed the latest details about OpenAI's "To-go" hardware project.

The hardware has been confirmed to be a special audio product to replace AirPods, with an internal code name of "Sweetpea".

According to him, on the manufacturing side, Foxconn has received notice to prepare for mass production of five devices by the fourth quarter of 2028. Not all of these devices have been revealed yet, but a home device and a stylus are still under development consideration.

Partial screenshot. Original link: https://x.com/zhihuipikachu/status/2010745618734759946

Multiple sources have repeatedly confirmed the same information: Due to the full commitment of the team led by former Apple chief design officer Jony Ive, "Sweetpea" is currently the top priority. The product is expected to be released around September, and OpenAI estimates its first-year shipment to be as high as 40 - 50 million units (for comparison, the annual shipment of Apple's AirPods series is about 60 - 70 million units). The specific details known so far are as follows, as shown in the reference diagram below.

In terms of industrial design, it is said to be "unique and unprecedented". The main unit is made of metal and looks like an eggstone.

In terms of wearing method, there are two capsule-shaped units inside the "eggstone", which can be taken out and worn behind the ears.

In terms of core performance, the main processor is targeted to be a smartphone-level chip with a 2nm process (currently, Samsung Exynos is the most favored). Therefore, most AI inference tasks can run locally. In addition, the project has also developed a custom chip that allows users to control Siri through commands to "replace the operations of an iPhone".

In terms of cost and positioning: Since the material selection and component specifications are closer to those of a mobile phone, the outside world is worried that its BOM (bill of materials) cost will be extremely high, but it is said that the device will have more powerful functions than existing products.

In the comment section, the blogger answered more questions about the device, such as "Does it produce sound through bone conduction or has a built-in speaker?" The answer is "There is currently no plan to use bone conduction."

Many netizens think the device is cool. If it can really replace AirPods, it will definitely be a revolutionary product. After all, it's a product designed by Apple's legendary designer Jony Ive, so expectations are high.

"This seems to be a bold attempt by OpenAI to enter the wearable AI market."

In May last year, OpenAI announced that it had acquired the secret hardware startup io founded by former Apple chief design officer Jony Ive for $6.5 billion. This was OpenAI's largest acquisition since its establishment. The two sides officially completed the team integration in July 2025.

io's original goal was to develop a new type of computing device "born for the AI era", aiming to break the current interaction logic centered around the smartphone screen and find a more natural and intuitive form of AI interaction. At least in OpenAI's earphones, we can see the continuation of this idea.

Currently, although OpenAI's smart hardware is still kept secret, through more and more revelations, we can gradually outline its general appearance.

Reference content:

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-ramps-audio-ai-efforts-ahead-device

https://x.com/kimmonismus/status/2010804115543114099

This article is from the WeChat official account "Machine Intelligence". Editors: Du Wei, Zenan. Republished by 36Kr with permission.