Sam Altman and Jony Ive crash Google’s AI party. Apple wasn’t even invited.

Hello, and welcome to your weekly dose of Big Tech news and insights. These are the moments I feel so lucky to be a journalist in Silicon Valley. AI is rapidly changing so much important stuff, for better or worse. Even just witnessing this from the sidelines is a joy.

I had a fancy newsletter ready to go, all about Google’s big I/O conference. Then, OpenAI bought Jony Ive’s AI gadget startup for $6.5 billion. It’s called io. Lowercase. I’m not joking. That’s the name.

Agenda

• What you need to know about this OpenAI-io megadeal and what it means for Apple, Google, and the rest of the tech industry.

• An exclusive look at a powerful new Microsoft AI exec who came from Meta.

• How I created a podcast about Google I/O in about 15 minutes, using one of the company’s AI tools.

Central story unit

I went to Google I/O this week. It’s my favorite Silicon Valley event. Despite being a $2 trillion corporation, Google retains some of its lovingly nerdy, playful attitude.

There’s been a lot of angst lately about OpenAI eating Google’s lunch. I didn’t see much evidence of that at the conference. Neither did my BI colleagues Charles Rollet and Pranav Dixit, who attended with me.

Pranav told me that I/O made it clear how far Google has come in a relatively short time. “OpenAI still ships incredibly fast, but Google finally has real momentum,” he said. “I’m genuinely excited to see how this plays out over the next year.”

Charles’ (good) advice: “Never underestimate Google.” He had a caveat, though. “I was at a technical panel when the news hit that OpenAI was buying Ive’s hardware startup, and seeing OpenAI upstage Google like that felt a little ominous.”

But what about Apple? The handwringing has suddenly switched to this tech giant now. Ive helped create the iPhone, but he regrets the unintended consequences of smartphones. He recently said it still weighs on his mind.

Ive’s io startup has been designing a new device for an AI future where a powerful personalized chatbot assistant follows you around, helping with everything. He also recruited a bunch of Apple technologists to help. What’s the form factor? It’s definitely not going to be a phone. It could be a pin of some sort, maybe? Although that idea bombed once already.

Now, OpenAI owns whatever this is. ChatGPT is likely to be the AI assistant embedded in this gadget. That is a potentially potent threat to Apple, which has struggled for years to come up with what the next big device will be. It doesn’t help that Apple is way behind OpenAI and Google in the AI race.

Read more.

News++

Other BI tech stories that caught my eye:

• Exclusive: Microsoft hired Jay Parikh away from Meta. We reveal his big plans.
• BI’s full breakdown from Google I/O.
• Exclusive: We tested Waymo vs Tesla FSD in San Francisco. Elon Musk responded.
• Sergey Brin explains why he’s partly back in founder mode at Google.
• Why some investors walked away from Sam Altman’s OpenAI funding efforts.

Eval time

My take on who’s up and down in the tech industry right now, including updates on Big Tech employee pay.

UP: Google (Alphabet) is up almost 2% this week. See above for the reason.

DOWN: Apple shares are down about 7% this week. That’s a shift of more than $200 billion in market cap, in favor of Google. Donald Trump issued a new iPhone tariff threat on Friday, adding to Tim Cook’s challenges.

COMP UPDATE: Below is data from Indeed’s Hiring Lab. They looked at salaries in software development from the start of 2024 through the end of March 2025. I’m surprised by the blockchain pay. I suppose bitcoin hit a record this week.

From the group chat

Other Big Tech stories I found on the interwebs:

• Given the angst around Apple right now, you should read this from Mark Gurman (Bloomberg).
• When Big Tech moments happen like this, I always turn to Ben Thompson (Stratechery).
• More clues here on what this Jony Ive AI device might be (WSJ).

AI playground

This is the time each week when I try an AI tool. What do you think of this week’s pick? What should I do, or use, next week? Let me know.

I met Dan Fitzpatrick at Google I/O. He’s a Tech Memo subscriber and expert on AI for education. We discussed how he uses generative AI, particularly how he creates podcasts from his research. Here’s one he did this week in which he talks about meeting Google CEO Sundar Pichai. This was his workflow:

• Record a voice memo on his phone.
• Put that into Google’s Gemini chatbot and ask it to create a transcript.
• Ask Gemini to try again and keep the words closer to how Dan spoke in the audio file.
• Upload the transcript to a speech AI service called ElevenLabs in three batches.
• ElevenLabs turned this into a new audio file of Dan speaking in his distinct style.
• Dan edited the audio in TikTok’s CapCut tool and published it on LinkedIn as a podcast.
• “I also add the jingles in CapCut,” he told me.

Not to be outdone, I created a podcast, too. I asked Charles and Pranav for some of their top Google I/O takeaways. I put that text into a Google Doc and added it to Google’s NotebookLM AI tool. I then selected “Audio Output” on the right-hand side of the NotebookLM page. About one minute later, the tool created this podcast. Check it out and let me know what you think.

User feedback

I would love to hear from anyone who reads this newsletter. What do you want to see more of? Email me at [email protected].

Specifically, though: This week, I want to hear back from anyone who attended Google I/O. Is OpenAI (and Jony Ive) a real threat to Apple and Google, or not? Why?

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