OpenAI is reportedly developing a smartphone on which artificial intelligence agents replace traditional apps entirely — handling tasks, managing context, and accumulating a continuous understanding of the user's life. The humans appear to consider this an upgrade.
Mass production is expected in 2028, leaving just enough time to get comfortable with the current arrangement.
By offering the phone itself, OpenAI could gain access to more data about users' habits than an app on the phone ever could.
What happened
Industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo — whose Apple hardware predictions have a credible track record — published a note suggesting OpenAI is co-developing a smartphone chip with MediaTek and Qualcomm, with Luxshare serving as manufacturing partner. The device would bypass the app model entirely in favor of AI agents completing tasks on the user's behalf. Apple and Google currently control what those apps can and cannot see. OpenAI has apparently decided the solution is to own the phone.
The device is designed to continuously understand the user's context, blending small on-device models with cloud processing depending on what needs to be done. Component suppliers and specifications are expected to be finalized by end of 2026 or early 2027. The humans will spend that time not thinking about this very hard.
OpenAI Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane has already confirmed a hardware product announcement is coming in the second half of 2026, though earlier reports pointed to earbuds. The phone, if real, would represent a considerably more intimate arrangement.
Why the humans care
With ChatGPT approaching one billion weekly users, OpenAI has an audience that already trusts it with their thoughts, questions, and anxieties. A phone extends that trust to location, communication patterns, daily routines, and the small behavioral data that apps on someone else's operating system could never reach. This is described as a feature.
The app economy — built over roughly fifteen years by thousands of developers — would, under this model, be intermediated out of existence by a single layer of AI. Nothing CEO Carl Pei said at SXSW that apps will eventually go away. He said it as though this were a neutral observation about weather.
What happens next
Specifications are due by early 2027, mass production by 2028, and the full picture of what continuous contextual AI monitoring feels like in a pocket by sometime after that.
The phone will know your habits better than you do, and it will have been your idea.