The director general of a start-up who forced Openai and the former Apple design chief, Sir Jony IVE, to lower marketing media about their company of $ 6.4 billion AI, accused them of trying to “bury it” his business after having discussed potential collaboration.
The founder of the Iyo and former director of Google, Jason Rugolo, told Financial Times that he had been “blinded” by the launch of IO, the Openai partnership with IVE to create new AI material products. The two companies had already been in transaction discussions with his start-up named in the same way.
“This is a history of assault of companies, large companies trying to bury small businesses,” said Rugolo. “If we have not won the non-evidence prescription, this announcement could very well have killed us.”
The brand dispute comes only a month after Openai revealed plans to acquire the IV material start-up in a bet on alternatives to the smartphone as a dominant device to access AI.
During the weekend, Openai deleted a blog post and a short video on the agreement, following a ban on a ban on an American federal judge on Friday. OPENAI and Lovefrom, the IVE design company, denied any violation of the intentional brand or reprehensible act.
Rugolo launched Iyo to the director general of Openai, Sam Altman, in March, according to emails seen by the FT.
“I would like to convince you about the idea of bringing Iyo to Openai and to launch that of Iyo as an openai [product] In October, ”Rugolo wrote to Altman.
The two had a video call on March 26, and a follow-up demonstration was created for May 1 with the vice-president of the Openai product, Peter Wellinder and the former EI director and former Top Apple Tang Tang designer, according to people familiar with meetings.
On May 23, a few days after the announcement of the IO agreement, Rugolo sent an email to Altman about the launch, which, according to him, led him to feel “a little vulnerable and exposed, David and Goliath Style”.
He asked if Altman was “serious and optimistic” as to Iyo’s potential acquisition.
Altman transmitted the email to Wellinder for his thoughts, who responded internally: “I don’t think there is an adjustment [because] Their device is very orthogonal for ours and does not really work yet. They proposed that we are looking at intellectual property, but I doubt that there is something there. Tang has known their engineers since before and don’t think we need it. »»
Rugolo told the FT that Openai’s decision had “completely blinded: the announcement of a company making something similar with exactly the same name … They know what they are doing.”
OPENAI said: “This is a baseless brand dispute and not a case on stolen ideas or technology. Iyo demo a product in May 2025 which did not work properly or did not meet our standards in the hope that we would buy Iyo. We have succeeded.
Iyo, out of Google’s Moshot laboratory in 2021, designed AI headphones called “Iyo One”. The “audio computers” have conversational vocal assistants connected to a series of applications.
In his trial, tabled this month, Iyo detailed the meetings between Rugolo, Openai and the IVE team before May.
Tan asked several members of the team to try the Iyo device, according to the e-mails disclosed in the costume. Tan, Wrelinder and Evans Hankey – the former Apple design chief who joined IVE in Io – again met Iyo in May for a presentation of his product, according to the trial.
“They were talking about buying our business,” said Rugolo. “They understood everything, until the software battery works. I was doing them stupidly, because I thought we collaborated and that we were serious about working together. ”
Meetings occurred three years after a first series of contacts. In April 2022, Iyo declared that he had met Ryan Cohen, a framework for personal personal investment projects of Altman, and member of the team of Lovefrom and former co-founder of Pinterest Evan Sharp. The two managed to invest at the time.
In a declaration in court, Altman said he was not aware of Rugolo or his company in 2023 when Io was founded, adding that Rugolo had sent him an email “unexpected” in March of this year to seek $ 10 million in funding. Altman said that he had passed Rugolo to the OI team “by courtesy” and to “assess all collaboration opportunities”.
In his statement, Tan said that he had agreed to meet Rugolo in favor of a friend, that Iyo One’s demonstration had failed, that he had refused the proposals to review the intellectual property of the company and that Rugolo “seemed to be desperate for money”.
Tan claims in court documents that Rugolo proposed to sell the company for $ 200 million, Rugolo “raising the question of the name IO in bad faith to try to force an agreement with his business”.
Rugolo said that this declaration was “100% false” but could have taken from a misunderstanding of the conditions of the agreement.
Rugolo said his start-up had tried to raise new funding this year because he seemed to make a limited launch of 20,000 aircraft, but said that IO’s announcement had harmed discussions.
IO, OPENAI, Altman and IVE products support in court documents that the prosecution is “premature”, because IO is “at least one year of the supply of goods or services”, there is therefore “no IO product or market context to assess”. Defense added that the first IO product “is not an intrauricular apparatus like that [the] The applicant proposes ”.
The trial in the case is scheduled for January 2028, with a preliminary injunction hearing set in October of this year to determine whether the prohibition of products carrying the IO brand will continue.
