Glass Imaging

AI Hardware · Computational Photography · Consumer Devices

Acquisition

OpenAI reportedly acquires camera startup Glass Imaging for $300M+

The purchase brings former Apple camera engineers into a hardware push that already includes Jony Ive's io studio.

• OpenAI quietly acquired Glass Imaging, a smartphone camera AI startup, in a deal reportedly valued at more than $300 million, according to the Wall Street Journal citing people familiar with the matter.
• Founded in 2019 by former Apple engineers Ziv Attar and Tom Bishop, who led development of the iPhone's Portrait Mode, Glass Imaging builds AI models that correct a photo's optical flaws at the moment of capture rather than editing it afterward.
• The price marks roughly a 3x jump from the approximately $100 million valuation Glass Imaging received in a funding round last year, after having raised only about $30 million in total prior funding.
• Glass Imaging's zoom-imaging technology was already licensed for use in Honor smartphones and pitched to manufacturers for drones and wearables before the acquisition.
• The purchase adds to a recent string of OpenAI acquisitions, including internet talk show TBPN and an open-source developer-tools startup, as the company builds out consumer hardware ahead of an expected IPO next year.
• The deal signals OpenAI is assembling in-house imaging expertise for its own device ambitions, a move that could put it in direct competition with hardware incumbents like Apple for scarce camera engineering talent.