court filing in an ongoing trademark dispute revealed details about the AI hardware device OpenAI and Jony Ive are building. And it's not coming until next year.

OpenAI will not use the name "io" for its hardware devices due to a trademark infringement lawsuit from iyO, an AI audio device startup, as first reported by Wired. OpenAI had acquired Jony Ive's hardware company “io” in May for $6.5 billion and planned to use the name for its AI hardware line.

The court filing attained by Wired also featured comments from Peter Welinder, OpenAI’s vice president and general manager, who stated that the product will become available in February 2027. This comes after OpenAI's chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, said the device was scheduled to be released in the second half of 2026 to Axios House in Davos.

OpenAI has remained tight-lipped about the details of the AI hardware, yet there have been a string of reports on what it could be. The Financial Times previously reported that OpenAI was working on a “a palm-sized device without a screen that can take audio and visual cues from the physical environment and respond to users’ requests,” according to people familiar with the matter.

Other details in the report said the device would be about the size of a smartphone that people could communicate with using cameras, microphones, and speakers. In practice, this sounds similar to the Rabbit R1, a handheld device that got off to a rocky start because it was unable to deliver on the agentic capabilities it advertised. More recently, reports have stated that OpenAI is planning a smart earbud.