Credit: Zac Wolff on Unsplash OpenAI has bought Glass Imaging, a startup that uses AI to improve smartphone cameras, in a deal that values it at more than $300m. The Wall Street Journal reported the purchase on 14 September, citing people familiar with the matter. According to the WSJ, OpenAI bought the company quietly in recent months. Neither company has announced the deal.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment, TechCrunch reported. A funding round last year valued Glass Imaging at about $100m, The Information reported, citing the WSJ. The reported price is more than three times that figure. What Glass Imaging makes Two former Apple engineers started the company in 2019, and it has its base in Los Altos, California.
It had raised about $30m from investors before the deal, TechCrunch reported. Its website lists GV, LDV Capital, Future Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Ground Up, and Insight Partners as backers. Its software, GlassAI, trains custom neural networks for each camera system. Glass Imaging says the software reverses “lens aberrations and sensor imperfections” to get more image quality out of existing hardware.
The company describes its goal as bringing “DSLR quality to smartphones.” The software works at the moment the shutter fires, rather than editing a photo afterwards, TechCrunch reported. In a 2024 funding announcement, the company cited DXOMARK tests of its software on the Motorola Edge 40 Pro. Honor also uses the technology in its phones, according to Tech Funding News. Two former Apple engineers Chief executive Ziv Attar and chief technology officer Tom Bishop both worked at Apple.
Glass Imaging says Bishop co-created the technology behind the iPhone’s Portrait Mode. Attar founded LinX Imaging in 2011, which Apple bought in 2015, and later led computational photography work at Apple. The deal drew congratulations from imaging researcher Peyman Milanfar. “The camera is the future of intelligence,” he wrote on X. OpenAI’s hardware plans OpenAI bought io, the device startup of former Apple design chief Jony Ive, for $6.5bn in 2025.
Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president, has since confirmed the company is building “a family of devices.” Reports say its first device will be a screen-free smart speaker. Other reports say OpenAI is working on a phone built around AI agents, as well as earbuds. More than 200 employees work on its hardware, according to Tech Funding News. Glass Imaging is the latest in a string of OpenAI acquisitions this year.
Others include slide deck startup NextSlide and Northslope, which places engineers inside client businesses.
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