❯ Bloomberg: OpenAI’s First Hardware Is a Hockey-Puck-Sized Smart Speaker, Priced Above $300, Set for 2027

FORMAccording to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman, OpenAI’s first hardware device is a screen-free, donut-shaped smart speaker roughly the size of a hockey puck, compact enough to carry around the house in one hand. It’s priced above $300 (another report cites a $300–$400 range), with release set for 2027.

DETAILThe device was designed in collaboration with Jony Ive’s LoveFrom team and uses high-cost materials such as metal. It packs a battery, camera sensors, and dynamic lighting — plus movable mechanical parts meant to give it “personality” rather than making it a passively responsive speaker. OpenAI hopes to preview the product publicly this year, then start selling it next year. Measured against the hype of its 2024 acquisition of io, the form factor is actually quite conservative: neither glasses nor a pendant, it lands squarely in the desktop-speaker category Amazon and Google have fought over for a decade.

ASSESSMENTThe speaker poses a question on behalf of smart-speaker makers: how much hardware premium can a smart-enough model support? Amazon Echo and Google Nest have long kept prices at the $50 tier; OpenAI is starting at above $300, betting that conversational quality alone can justify a sixfold price gap. That bet won’t be settled until 2027 — with an entire round of hardware supply-chain price increases in between.

▪ SIGNALA price six times that of the Echo puts “is the model any good” directly on the price tag of consumer electronics.