MoneySeptember 14, 2026via TechCrunch AI

OpenAI buys smartphone camera maker Glass Imaging for $300 million, report says

Why it matters

OpenAI is expanding beyond language models into computer vision hardware and imaging, signaling a push into multimodal AI products and potentially new consumer device categories.

Key signals

  • Acquisition price: $300 million
  • Target: Glass Imaging, smartphone camera maker
  • Founders: former Apple engineers who led Portrait Mode development
  • Strategic angle: OpenAI's move into vision hardware and imaging capabilities

The hook

$300M. OpenAI just acquired Glass Imaging — the smartphone camera startup behind Apple's Portrait Mode.

Glass Imaging was founded by a pair of former Apple engineers who previously led the team that developed Apple's Portrait Mode.

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