On October 23rd, OpenAI officially announced the acquisition of Software Applications, a Mac-based AI interface developer. All 12 employees of the startup, founded in 2023 and once recipient of a $6.5 million seed round financing involving OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, will join OpenAI as an entire team. Its core product is Sky, an AI interface tool specifically designed for Apple computers.
The acquisition’s key target, the Sky product, boasts notable technical strengths. As a natural language interface tool, it can appear as a floating window on users’ desktops to assist in their thinking and creation. Its most prominent advantage lies in its ability to accurately understand on-screen content and execute operations through various applications, achieving deep integration with the Mac system—this technical feature is what makes it a key draw for OpenAI. Nick Turley, head of the ChatGPT team, revealed that he was deeply impressed when first watching Ari Weinstein, CEO of Software Applications, demonstrate Sky, noting that the product’s capabilities can turn many of OpenAI’s conceptual visions into reality. This development is also a highlight in the latest AI news recently.
According to OpenAI’s plan, it will fully integrate Sky’s macOS deep integration technology and product design philosophy into the ChatGPT product line. This move aligns with its development vision of directly embedding AI into users’ daily tools. Ari Weinstein stated that his team has long strived to make computers more empowering, customizable, and intuitive, and the advancement of large language models has provided crucial support for achieving this goal.
This acquisition is not an isolated case but a continuation of OpenAI’s recent merger and acquisition strategy. In May last year, the company acquired io, an AI device startup founded by Jony Ive, for over $6 billion; in September of the same year, it purchased Statsig, a product development startup, for $1.1 billion. Through a series of such moves, OpenAI has rapidly gained core technical capabilities and professional talents, particularly achieving remarkable results in promoting the integration of AI functions with existing operating systems and users’ workflows.
Currently, OpenAI has not announced a specific timeline for integrating Sky’s features with ChatGPT, only stating that it will release relevant update information successively. The industry generally believes that this acquisition will further enhance OpenAI’s competitiveness in the consumer AI application sector and lay a solid foundation for its AI layout in the Apple ecosystem.
