India, May 22 -- OpenAI has struck a landmark deal to acquire Sir Jony Ive's startup io for $6.5 billion, enlisting the British design luminary to spearhead its next-generation hardware ambitions. The agreement brings Ive celebrated for shaping Apple's iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad-into a deep creative partnership that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman hailed as "a chance to completely reimagine what it means to use a computer." Under the terms of the merger, Ive will assume "deep design and creative responsibilities" across OpenAI, collaborating on a new family of AI-powered devices built from the ground up. Altman shared that early prototypes crafted by Ive's team have "completely captured our imagination," calling them "the coolest piece of technology...