A new kind of computer from OpenAI

The device that OpenAI plans to sell in 2027 will be shaped like a doughnut, roughly the size of a hockey puck, and light enough to carry from room to room in one hand. It will have no screen, a ring of moving parts that stir when it speaks, lights that signal when it is listening, and a camera that takes in whatever is around it. It will also, according to Bloomberg, which reported the details this week, cost between $300 and $400 — a price that breaks with the entire category the device appears to be entering.

Amazon and Google spent the better part of a decade proving that nobody pays for a smart speaker. The Echo Dot, whose components cost roughly $31 to assemble, sold for $29 during the holidays that mattered; Google's Home Mini did the same. The hardware was a subsidy, priced at or below cost, and the wager was that a speaker in every kitchen would pay for itself later, through purchases, subscriptions, and the slow accretion of a household's data. Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder, ran the strategy with unusual conviction, and it produced unusual losses: Amazon's devices division shed some $25 billion between 2017 and 2021, and the Alexa unit alone reportedly lost $10 billion in 2022. The speaker went into the home. The money never followed it out.