OpenAI Files Trademark Application for Hardware, Robots and AI Chips
A trademark application filed Friday (Jan. 31) by OpenAI reportedly suggests new product lines the company could pursue.
Some of these product lines could be introduced in the near term while others may be more speculative, TechCrunch reported Monday (Feb. 3).
OpenAI’s trademark application includes headphones, goggles, glasses, remotes, laptop and phone cases, smartwatches, smart jewelry, and virtual and augmented reality headsets, according to the report.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said this week that the company aims to develop AI-powered consumer hardware but that doing so would take several years, per the report.
The application also mentioned robots, and OpenAI began hiring for a new robotics team, the report said.
Custom AI chips and quantum computing are also mentioned in the application, per the report.
While OpenAI’s trademark application may reveal domains the company is exploring, it doesn’t necessarily indicate that the company will bring products in the categories to market, according to the report.
This news came on the same day that OpenAI and the SoftBank Group announced that they agreed to establish a joint venture company that will market enterprise AI solutions to major companies in Japan.
In addition, SoftBank will spend $3 billion annually to integrate new enterprise AI and existing tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise across its group companies.
OpenAI also debuted an AI tool dubbed “deep research” Monday, saying the tool is capable of performing multistep online research and “accomplishes in tens of minutes what would take a human many hours.”
Powered by an iteration of OpenAI’s upcoming o3 AI model that is designed for web browsing and data analysis, deep research will use the company’s ChatGPT chatbot to find, analyze and synthesize online sources like images, text and PDFs to create a report.
It was reported Thursday (Jan. 30) that OpenAI is in talks for a $40 billion funding round that would be led by SoftBank. Some of the capital raised in the round would go toward the $18 billion OpenAI has committed to contribute to the Stargate AI infrastructure joint venture, which also includes SoftBank, and some would support OpenAI’s money-losing business operations.
Consumer sentiment dropped about 5% in February, falling to its lowest level since July, according to preliminary results for the University of Michigan’s February Surveys of Consumers.
This was the second consecutive month in which consumer confidence dropped, following a 4% slide in January that marked the first decline in the reading in six months.
Surveys of Consumers Director Joanne Hsu attributed the drop in part to consumers’ concerns about the impact of tariffs, according to a Friday (Feb. 7) press release.
Hsu said that while all components of the index declined in February, the deterioration was
Led by a 12% slide in buying conditions for durables, in part due to a perception that it may be too late to avoid the negative impact of tariff policy.
The survey found that many consumers are worried that high inflation will return within a year, according to the release.
Year-ahead inflation expectations jumped from 3.3% in January to 4.3% in February — the highest reading since November 2023 — and long-run inflation expectations inched up from 3.2% to 3.3%, per the release.
Hsu said in the release, said:
This is only the fifth time in 14 years we have seen such a large one-month rise (one percentage point or more) in year-ahead inflation expectations,
President Donald Trump announced tariffs Saturday (Feb. 1) that would levee a 25% bump on imports from Canada and Mexico and 10% on China. Trump also promised to introduce tariffs on European Union imports, but the timing around that action was uncertain.
Trump later agreed to delay tariffs on Canada and Mexico, but the 10% levies on China went live Tuesday (Feb. 4).
The Conference Board said Jan. 28 that consumer confidence declined in January but remained within the narrow range it has been in since 2022.
Dana M. Peterson, chief economist at The Conference Board, said :
All five components of the Index deteriorated but consumers’ assessments of the present situation experienced the largest decline,
“Notably, views of current labor market conditions fell for the first time since September, while assessments of business conditions weakened for the second month in a row.”
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OpenAI Files Trademark Application for Hardware, Robots and AI Chips, source
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