parallelquant
September 14, 2026 · TechCrunch

OpenAI reportedly buys smartphone camera startup for $300M

OpenAI has acquired Glass Imaging, a smartphone camera technology startup founded by former Apple engineers who helped build Portrait Mode, according to a report. The deal is reportedly worth $300 million.

Why it matters: This is another sign OpenAI is building toward its own hardware, likely involving advanced camera-based AI features, rather than staying purely software. Bringing in ex-Apple camera engineers points to ambitions beyond chatbots, arriving the same week Apple pushed its own on-device AI forward with iOS 27.

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