OpenAI's $300+ Donut-Shaped Speaker Won't Ship Until 2027

OpenAI’s first piece of consumer hardware is taking shape, and it’s not what most people expected. According to a new Bloomberg report, the company is building a screenless smart speaker shaped like a donut, roughly the size of a hockey puck. Internally, the battery-powered device packs microphones, speakers, a camera system, moving parts, and lights. The price tag? North of $300. The launch window? 2027. That’s a long time to wait in a category Amazon and Google have already abandoned to some degree.

Sam Altman has never been shy about his “Her” ambitions, and this gadget is supposed to be the physical embodiment of that vision. It will run something akin to ChatGPT’s current voice mode, but the goal is for it to learn from conversations, adapt to individual users, and feel genuinely alive. That’s a tall order. We’ve seen people already attributing consciousness to text-based chatbots, with real-world consequences ranging from emotional dependency to outright delusion. Shipping a device designed to deepen that parasocial bond feels like a psychological experiment as much as a product launch.

More hardware is planned to follow this speaker, suggesting a broader ecosystem play. But there’s a legal storm cloud on the horizon that could scramble the timeline. Apple is suing OpenAI, alleging the startup poached more than 400 employees to steal hardware trade secrets. OpenAI denies the accusations and says it hasn’t touched any Apple intellectual property. The truth of those claims will play out in court, but the lawsuit itself is a weapon. Even if Apple loses, the discovery process and legal wrangling could slow OpenAI’s hardware roadmap enough to put the entire project in a precarious position.

I’m skeptical this device arrives on schedule, or at all in this form. Building consumer hardware at scale is a brutal, low-margin business that has chewed up far more experienced companies. OpenAI’s software moves at internet speed; hardware moves at supply-chain speed. The 2027 date already feels like an acknowledgment of that friction. Add a hostile lawsuit from the world’s most valuable company, and you have to wonder whether this donut-shaped speaker ever makes it out of the oven.