Monologue: Did OpenAI Steal Another Startup's Idea?

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Hello, and welcome to this week's Better Offline monologue.

I am, of course, Ed Zitron.

Last week, OpenAI abruptly pulled the promotional materials around, along with any mention of, its $6.4 billion all-stock acquisition of Joni Ives IO Products, an AI startup that is allegedly making some sort of screenless AI device with OpenAI that will allegedly launch next year.

Said device will not be, according to the Wall Street Journal, it won't be a phone, and

Ivan Altman's intent is to help wean users some screens.

I love my screen.

I don't know why people keep thinking that's a bad thing.

But anyway, it turns out the reason that they did this is that a company called IO

sued IO Products, OpenAI, Sam Altman, and I quote, Sir Jonathan Paul Ive,

Johnny Ive, just what a name, on June 9th, 2025, for trademark infringement, unfair competition, and unfair business practices.

IO also makes the case that these violations weren't a simply unhappy coincidence, but rather a deliberate action.

A judge granted a temporary restraining order on June 20th, 2025, that stops IO Products and OpenAI from using its name, which has obviously put the brakes on Altman's attempt to hype this acquisition, which he had previously leaked to the Wall Street Journal, could add a trillion dollars to the company's valuation, which is, of course, bullshit.

At this point, I'm going to start calling I.O.

products, by which I mean OpenAI's soon-to-be maybe acquired hardware wing, the defendants, because I.O., by which I mean the startup in question, sounds literally the same.

I.O.

has been referring to a device that they're making as a computer without a screen since, according to an archived version of their website I found, at least April 2nd, 2025.

The defendants argued in their response to I.O.'s complaint that they made changes only after seeing I.O.

products, so Johnny Ives thing, or Johnny Ive fucking don't care, and their thing when they launched.

And this is right before they filed the complaint, which is actually true.

Anyway, who are these people?

So I.O.

was founded in March 2018 as part of Google X, which is effectively Google's internal skunk works RD division, and was spun out as an independent company in August 2021, raising a further $37.2 million on top of the $25 million Google had already provided.

I.O.

has been preparing for launch ever since.

They've had an audiologist-approved thing, I think, that's come out since.

But the IO1 device, the thing that's really the thing that we're talking about here, which is an ear-worn screenless computer, that's meant to have launched already.

Techron said it would launch in winter 2024 and 2024, and of course it hasn't.

And the current store page says it will launch in August 2025, but bugging me, I don't know how they would possibly raise money now.

There is a company possibly owned by OpenAI that has the same name that might do the same thing.

It's not great, and it doesn't get better for the defendants because I.O.

also owns a trademark, one that covers everything from audio headphones, microcomputers, downloadable mobile operating system software, and a bunch of other things that would make it very easy to mistake the defendant's announcement, well, for IO and the IO1.

I mean, they have the same fucking name.

They have the same name.

They have the same name.

Now, one might think this is all a weird coincidence, except it very well might not be.

According to I.O.'s complaint, representatives from Sam Altman's Apollo Projects, one of his many many venture capital firms, met with the company multiple times, receiving technical information and the vision for the product, along with demonstrations of whatever they had at the time.

Weirdly enough, in April 2022, I.O.

was also introduced to Johnny Ives design firm Love From to talk about a potential partnership, one that LoveFrom eventually declined.

Important detail, LoveFrom also works with OpenAI.

I don't know if they'd started at that point.

In 2022, I.O.

also attempted to hire Evans Hankey as their head of design.

Great name there.

And basically, the heir apparent to Johnny Ive at Apple and Ive left, except Hanky left to join Ive on a product that sounds the same.

I just fucking hate these people.

Hanke declined and in the defendant's reply framed the conversation as Hankey taking a favor for a friend, just talking to someone.

Nevertheless, Hanky went on to co-found the defendant's version of IO Products in 2023.

Also, a lot of the defendants' arguments are, yeah, it was just being nice.

I was just meeting with them because they were nice.

Because Altman himself said on Twitter, oh, I meet with founders all the time.

Do you?

Do they have the same fucking name as the companies you're buying?

Jesus Christ.

In 2025, I.O.

chose to reach out to Sam Altman to invest and got the response that Altman was, and I quote, working on something competitive, and that he would, and I quote, again, respectfully pass before adding that the company was called IO Products and that Johnny Ive was driving this, which is also a quote.

Otherwise, multiple people that work for the defendant's identically named company went on to try I.O.'s current product as well as receive demonstrations of the upcoming IO1 device, a screenless computer that you control with your voice.

IO also claims that there were multiple meetings with OpenAI representatives and Altman himself about an acquisition, though emails that Altman has publicly shared make it seem more like a friendly gesture this time.

And I would buy that to an extent.

On the announcement of the deal to acquire Ives company in May, I.O.

CEO Jason Rogolo, Rogolo, reached out to Altman again to see about partnering or maybe an acquisition, eventually bringing up that there was an obvious similarity between the names.

He used the words rut-ro,

which

if I was in a high-stakes corporate negotiation, I would not speak like Scooby-Doo.

Now, the defendants frame Rogolo and Io's meetings as a generosity on their part, and their generosity was so profound that they chose to meet with Io at least five times over the course of three years.

For whatever reason, both Altman and Rogolo are choosing to post about this publicly, and both of them seem like huge assholes.

Rogolo also posted,

I have not, nor have I ever been suicidal on Twitter.

And I must add, I'm not a lawyer.

But some legal advice.

Don't post that or anything.

Don't ever, if you're in a lawsuit, don't go fucking posting about the lawsuit.

I don't care if you're some guy or you're Sam Altman.

You shouldn't be doing that.

It's just very frustrating to watch.

I was talking to a friend of the show, Casey Kagara, about this, and I think it gave him madness, which is good because I like to share it with people.

Nevertheless, the judge ordered that the defendants cease using the name IO products until a hearing is held in October, and in general judges are hesitant to make this kind of ruling without a sincere belief that the case has merit.

But in summary, this suit alleges that representatives of Sam Altman, Johnny Ive and their respective firms IO Products, Love From, Apollo Projects and OpenAI repeatedly met with IO, as in Jason Rogolo's company, as a means of learning more about the intellectual property and design of its products, going as far as to suggest that they may partner with, invest in, or consider acquiring the company.

I keep thinking of like a Jason Derulo bit with Rogulo, but I don't know how to say his name proper.

At this point, I'm several minutes into recording the monologue.

Someone else do the funny.

But to me, something about this whole thing feels fishy on both counts.

The defendant's argument is that these meetings were harmless, streaming Rogulo and Iowa's desperate counterparties with a device stuck in development hell, begging OpenAI and Sam Altman to invest in or acquire them.

Which is compelling-ish.

The emails that Sam Altman shared publicly, and I'll have these in the notes, they don't make Mr.

Jason look particularly good.

They make him look a little desperate.

But at the same time, and I know this from talking to various founders about like money, is you generally don't go in heart and the bigger they are, they get kind of gladhandle them a little bit because you don't want to piss them off.

It's basic business.

So he could have just been being nice.

I would actually buy this.

I would also buy the defendant's argument, and I think it would have a lot more weight if it wasn't for the fact that they'd met with IO so many fucking times and their goddamn name is identical.

In fact, what makes this entire thing so ridiculous is that Altman and Ives could have named their startup literally anything else and none of this would have happened.

They could have named it Buttburger Inc.

and it would have been fine.

IO would never have sued them if they were called Buttburger Inc.

I don't know what they're doing, but I guess the creator of the world's biggest plagiarism machine couldn't fucking help himself.

While the emails that Altman has shared publicly do make Rogolo sound a bit cloying and don't feel like things you'd send somebody you have a deep relationship with, like they feel like new conversations and very generic, IO claims that there have been multiple other calls and emails and I imagine those will come out in Discovery, which is the part of the lawsuit where everybody has to share emails and communications.

Yet for me, the most damning part is the involvement of Johnny Ives Love From in 2022.

Altman's absolutely a gadfly and I would buy the idea that he'd meet with random people doing an AI startup.

There is a history there of him randomly responding to people and meeting up with them.

Sure, whatever.

But why was Johnny Ives designed for meeting with IO in 2022?

A year before he'd found a company with the same name that does something really similar sounding in roughly the same timeframe that Sam Altman was meeting with them.

I mean, Sam Altman's representatives.

Isn't that kind of weird?

I mean, it is.

It's extremely weird.

Why you're just this friendly?

You just love hanging out?

This Jason guy doesn't seem like he's doing well.

Is he really charming?

Is he fun to hang out with?

Jason, hit me up, baby.

Let's hang out.

Actually, don't do that.

You're in a really big lawsuit.

I don't want to fucking talk to you.

Stop posting.

In any case, this fascicle situation will ground OpenAI's hardware efforts to a halt for a little bit.

At least until at least for a month but they could just rebrand it like Butt Burger Inc maybe but just throwing that out there call me Sam and if you use that name I'm suing you too and while they could come up with a new name such as Buttburger any details of the product that leak or announce will now face unbelievable scrutiny if not by the tech press but by me and IO's lawyers because that's the thing They chose this name and changing the name will not hide the fact that they knew some stuff about IO's products and I mean

the plaintiff in this lawsuit.

That's the other thing.

The name is so similar, man.

You couldn't have come up with anything.

And they're claiming, by the way, oh, I.O.

refers to input-output, which is true, but fuck mate, could you not have come up with anything else?

Any other name?

Buttburger?

I don't know.

I'm going to say that at least one more time before the end of the episode.

Butburger, there you go.

Anyway.

This whole thing is fucking stupid.

I find both sides of the situation very annoying.

And it's also important to note that OpenAI has yet to buy I/O products, you know, the Johnny Ive startup, and is currently in the process of trying to convince Microsoft to let them become a for-profit company, which I will get to probably in next week's monologue.

Until then, I just want to say that everybody in this situation kind of fucking sucks.

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