OpenAI Enters the Smart Speaker Race at $300

OpenAI is building a camera-equipped smart speaker priced between $200 and $300, designed with Jony Ive’s LoveFrom studio and expected later in 2026. The device leans on visual input and facial recognition rather than a screen, letting ChatGPT observe a room and nudge users contextually. Over 200 employees are working across OpenAI’s hardware efforts. The timing is crowded – Apple’s HomePad and Google’s Gemini speakers both launch this spring, while Amazon pours $50 billion into Alexa+ powered by Anthropic. M.G. Siegler frames the real question well: every major platform company is now racing to put an AI model inside a home device, but nobody has proven that voice-first hardware can hold attention the way phones do.