OpenAI buys smartphone camera maker Glass Imaging for $300 million, report says

OpenAI has acquired Glass Imaging, a smartphone camera company, in a deal worth more than $300 million, according to a Wall Street Journal report cited by TechCrunch. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Glass Imaging was founded in 2019 and is based in Los Altos, California. The company had previously raised about $30 million from investors, a modest sum next to the reported sale price.

Its founders are Ziv Attar and Tom Bishop, a pair of former Apple engineers who previously led the team that developed Apple's Portrait Mode. That background directly informs the work they now do at Glass Imaging, where they use AI to overcome the physical size constraints of smartphone cameras.

The technical approach is the interesting part. Rather than using AI to edit a photo after it has been taken, Glass Imaging trains neural networks on individual camera systems, meaning the different cameras on various smartphone models, so images come out better from the moment the shutter clicks.

That places AI at the front of the imaging pipeline rather than the filter end of it. For any hardware team that wants the camera to be a core experience, sensor-plus-algorithm tuning like this is scarce, which helps explain the premium over the company's modest funding history.

The purchase also fits OpenAI's broader hardware ambitions. The ChatGPT maker is rumored to be working on its own devices, including smartphones, earbuds, and AI companion devices.

There is precedent for that direction. In 2025, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and famed Apple designer Jony Ive revealed they had been working together on a device startup called io, when OpenAI bought Ive's company for $6.5 billion.

Because the deal is reported rather than officially announced, key details such as the final price, the structure, and how the team will be absorbed remain unconfirmed. Three things are worth watching: whether Glass Imaging's imaging stack shows up inside an OpenAI device, whether the team keeps its own product line, and how Apple and Google respond in portrait and low-light photography, areas they have long owned.