Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz is serving as legal counsel to OpenAI on its $6.5 billion acquisition of Io Products, the AI hardware startup co-founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive, in a transaction that marks the largest deal in OpenAI’s history and the most significant mandate in the AI M&A market to date.
The Wachtell team is led by partners Raaj S. Narayan and Matthew T. Carpenter, with support from Andrew J. Nussbaum, Mark F. Veblen, T. Eiko Stange, Tijana J. Dvornic, Jeannemarie O’Brien, Ilene Knable Gotts, Emily D. Johnson and Ian Boczko — a bench that spans M&A, antitrust, executive compensation and capital markets. Counsel for Io Products has not been disclosed, leaving open the question of which firm is advising on the other side of what will be scrutinised as a landmark transaction.
The deal surpasses OpenAI’s previous largest acquisition — the $3 billion purchase of AI-assisted coding platform Windsurf — and its earlier acquisition of enterprise analytics startup Rockset. Io Products was founded in 2024 by Ive alongside longtime Apple collaborators Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan, with the stated ambition of building a new generation of AI-native consumer hardware.
OpenAI held a minority stake in Io prior to signing the definitive agreement. Following completion, Ive and his design collective LoveFrom will assume expanded creative roles within OpenAI, working directly alongside Sam Altman and OpenAI’s research and engineering teams in San Francisco.
The transaction places Wachtell at the centre of AI’s most closely watched corporate story. The firm’s instruction by OpenAI — which has previously worked with Cooley on corporate governance and financing matters — signals that as AI companies move from venture-backed growth into full-scale corporate dealmaking, the premium advisory market is shifting toward the established
Wall Street M&A elite rather than the technology-specialist firms that dominated the sector’s earlier phases. For Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Sullivan & Cromwell and other firms with active technology M&A practices, the Wachtell instruction reinforces the competitive dynamic at the top of the AI transaction market.
For in-house counsel at technology companies monitoring precedent for AI acquisition structuring, valuation and regulatory clearance, the Io Products deal will be watched closely. The transaction requires no disclosed regulatory approvals at this stage, though the involvement of antitrust partner Ilene Knable Gotts in the Wachtell team suggests the parties are alive to potential scrutiny given OpenAI’s market position. Law firms advising on AI M&A can expect the volume and complexity of such transactions to increase significantly through the remainder of 2026 as the sector consolidates.