The name of the company purchased by OpenAI for 6.5 billion dollars in late may, has, for all its hype at the time, been taken down by a court order.
Court orders takedown
The announcement page is down, the launch video is offline and has been replaced with this text:
This page is temporarily down due to a court order following a trademark complaint from iyO about our use of the name “io.” We don’t agree with the complaint and are reviewing our options.https://t.co/suwMRPTHqB
— OpenAI Newsroom (@OpenAINewsroom) June 22, 2025
Without delving into detail about what concrete products the new Io division would produce, it was clear that the ambition was to create a «new generation of AI-powered computers,» that they expected to sell in the hundreds of millions.
Rival product has the same name
The problem is that that is precisely what rival company Iyo, which sounds the same, is doing.
Business Insider reports that the company had initially approached OpenAI for a partnership on AI-enabled devices, but was rebuffed.
Iyo is currently marketing a screenless «AI audio computer» that sits on your ear, which you can talk to using natural language.
The Io product from OpenAI, however, was labelled by CEO Sam Altman as «the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen.»
As OpenAI notes on the takedown post and on Twitter, they disagree with the ruling and are evaluating their options.
Read more: Business Insider has detailed report, Iyo Audio web page, writeups on The Verge and TechCrunch. See also teknotum on the collaboration