Report says OpenAI bought Glass Imaging for over $300 million

In short: A report says OpenAI has acquired smartphone camera startup Glass Imaging in a deal worth more than $300 million.

What happened

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, bought Glass Imaging for over $300 million, according to The Wall Street Journal, as reported by TechCrunch. Glass Imaging is based in Los Altos, California, and was founded in 2019. TechCrunch says the company previously raised about $30 million from investors.

Glass Imaging was founded by Ziv Attar and Tom Bishop, who previously worked at Apple. TechCrunch notes they led the team that developed Apple’s Portrait Mode, a feature that makes the background look blurred while the subject stays sharp.

The company’s focus is making phone photos look better by improving how the camera captures the image in the first place. It uses neural networks, which are a kind of AI trained by learning from lots of examples (like teaching a system by showing it many photos). Glass Imaging trains its software to understand the quirks of different phone camera models, so the picture can be improved the moment the shutter clicks, instead of being edited afterward.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. The deal also comes as OpenAI is widely rumored to be working on hardware of its own, including possible phones and earbuds.

Why it matters

For regular phone users, this points to a future where AI is built deeper into the camera itself, not just into photo editing apps. Think of it like upgrading the “eyes” of a phone, rather than adding filters later. If OpenAI uses this technology in its own devices or partners with phone makers, people could see clearer photos in difficult situations like low light, without needing to do extra steps.

Source: TechCrunch AI