OpenAI buys smartphone camera maker Glass Imaging for $300M

In Brief

OpenAI has bought smartphone camera shaper Glass Imaging successful a woody worthy complete $300 million, according to a study from The Wall Street Journal. The company, founded successful 2019 and based successful Los Altos, California, had antecedently raised astir $30 cardinal successful backing from investors.

Glass Imaging was founded by Ziv Attar and Tom Bishop, a brace of erstwhile Apple engineers who antecedently led the team that developed Apple’s Portrait Mode. This inheritance straight informs the activity they now do astatine Glass Imaging, wherever they usage AI to flooded the beingness size constraints of smartphone cameras. Rather than utilizing AI to edit a photograph aft it’s been taken, Glass Imaging uses neural networks to study astir individual camera systems — for illustration the different cameras connected various smartphone models — to output amended images from the infinitesimal the shutter clicks.

OpenAI did not instantly respond to a petition for comment. The ChatGPT shaper is rumored to beryllium moving connected its ain hardware, for illustration smartphones, earbuds, and AI companion devices.

In 2025, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and famed Apple designer Jony Ive revealed that they had been working together connected a instrumentality startup called io, erstwhile OpenAI bought Ive’s institution for $6.5 billion.

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