OpenAI's donut-shaped AI speaker is real — and it'll cost over $300

OpenAI's first consumer device has a shape you probably didn't expect: a donut. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman — the most reliable reporter on Apple and AI hardware — confirmed the device is roughly hockey-puck sized, has no screen, runs on a built-in battery, and will sell for somewhere between $300 and $400 when it launches in 2027. That price puts it well above a standard Amazon Echo ($99) and in the same territory as Apple's HomePod — which means OpenAI needs a compelling reason for people to pay up.

The hardware

The speaker is the first product from io Products, the startup OpenAI acquired for $6.5 billion in May 2025. Jony Ive — the designer behind every iconic Apple product from the iMac G3 to the iPhone — leads a team of over 200 people working on it. Beyond the donut shape, the device includes a camera system, sensors, ambient lighting, and — unusually — moving parts, which are apparently meant to make interactions feel less robotic. There's no wake word: you just talk to it.

Under the hood, it runs on a more powerful language model than the standard ChatGPT voice mode, tuned specifically for natural, conversational responses.

The competition

Amazon's Echo controls around 28% of the US smart speaker market; Google's Nest Audio holds roughly 24.6%. Both cost a fraction of what OpenAI is asking. The pitch here is that ChatGPT's conversational ability is genuinely different from Alexa or Google Assistant — less a command-response loop, more an actual back-and-forth. Whether that's worth three times the price of an Echo is the question OpenAI has to answer.

There's also legal risk. Apple has sued OpenAI over alleged trade secrets theft, and while no specific delay has been ruled in a court filing, an injunction could push the 2027 US or UK launch back.

What to expect

No retailer has been named and no pre-orders are open. The $300–$400 price range comes from Bloomberg and aligns with recent reporting by TechCrunch, superseding earlier estimates of $200–$300. A 2027 release window is confirmed, but an exact date hasn't been announced.