According to the Wall Street Journal, OpenAI is acquiring smartphone camera manufacturer Glass Imaging for more than $300 million. Glass Imaging was founded in 2019 and is based in Los Altos, California. It has previously raised about $30 million from investors. OpenAI has not yet responded to this matter.
Glass Imaging was founded by former Apple engineers Ziv Attar and Tom Bishop, who previously led Apple's portrait mode team. The company mainly uses neural networks to learn the imaging characteristics of different camera systems, directly improving image quality when the shutter is pressed, rather than relying on AI post-processing, thus overcoming the imaging limitations caused by the physical size of smartphone cameras.
This acquisition also aligns with OpenAI's ongoing hardware strategy. According to reports, OpenAI is developing hardware products including smartphones, earphones, and AI companion devices. In 2025, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Jony Ive, former Apple design chief, announced a collaboration to develop hardware devices, and later acquired Ive's company for $6.5 billion. The related team formed the hardware startup io.
If the deal is finalized, Glass Imaging's computational photography technology and team experience are expected to further enhance OpenAI's technical capabilities in AI hardware, indicating that OpenAI is expanding from AI software and model capabilities to terminal devices and interaction interfaces.
