The next iPhone moment might come from an AI company, not Samsung or Apple

Your smartphone has a pile of apps. OpenAI wants to replace all of them with one AI agent that just gets things done. That’s the vision behind the company’s plans to build its own smartphone, complete with a custom processor co-developed with MediaTek and Qualcomm, as first reported by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo on X.

And Sam Altman seems to agree. In a post on X, the OpenAI CEO wrote, “feels like a good time to seriously rethink how operating systems and user interfaces are designed.” That is not a subtle hint.

feels like a good time to seriously rethink how operating systems and user interfaces are designed

(also the internet; there should be a protocol that is equally usable by people and agents)

— Sam Altman (@sama) April 26, 2026

Why would OpenAI want to make a phone?

We have seen earlier attempts at developing truly agentic AI in the form of Rabbit, Humane AI Pin, and other AI devices. However, those devices lacked the tight integration with our phones, apps, and services, resulting in failure. It seems that OpenAI wants to sidestep the limitation by creating its own phone to provide users with a true AI assistant.

There are three solid reasons. First, to deliver a truly comprehensive AI agent experience, OpenAI needs full control over both the software and the hardware. Relying on Android or iOS means playing by someone else’s rules.

Second, your smartphone knows more about you than any other device. It tracks your location, your habits, and your daily context in real time. That kind of data is gold for an AI agent trying to anticipate your needs before you even ask.

Third, smartphones are and will remain the biggest device category on the planet. If OpenAI wants to scale, this is where it needs to be.

How will the AI actually work on this phone?

According to Ming-Chi Kuo, the new OpenAI smartphone will work on a two-layer system. The phone will handle lighter tasks on-device, like understanding your context, managing memory, and running smaller AI models. Heavier tasks get offloaded to the cloud.

It’s similar to what Apple does with its iPhone and Private Cloud Compute, but OpenAI has the benefit of an actually working artificial intelligence model and not the disaster Apple calls Apple Intelligence.

Apple

On the business side, OpenAI is likely looking at bundling hardware with subscriptions, similar to how Apple bundles services, while also building a developer ecosystem around its AI agents.

Who is helping OpenAI build this thing?

Mr. Kuo reports that MediaTek and Qualcomm are the processor co-development partners, while Luxshare is the exclusive system co-design and manufacturing partner. Luxshare is particularly interesting here.

According to Kuo, the company has long tried to challenge Hon Hai’s (read Foxconn) dominant position in Apple’s supply chain without much success. This project gives Luxshare an early foothold in what could be the next major smartphone generation, and that is a big deal for the company.