OpenAI's smart speaker is reported at $300 to $400, in a donut you carry room to room
The device is described as donut-shaped and portable within the home rather than fixed in one place. The price sits well above the smart speakers that trained everyone to expect this hardware to be nearly free.
The price is the strategic statement. Smart speakers were sold at or below cost for a decade as a way to buy a foothold in the home. Asking $300 to $400 says the device is expected to justify itself on capability rather than to subsidise an ecosystem.
Portable within the home is the interaction bet. Fixed speakers made assistants a room-scoped utility. A device you carry from kitchen to desk to bedroom is trying to be continuous — which only works if the thing on the other end holds context across those moves.
It is also the first serious attempt to put a frontier conversational model behind dedicated hardware. The previous generation of these devices failed at exactly the point where the assistant had to actually understand something.
TechCrunch — OpenAI's new AI smart speaker will reportedly sell for between $300 and $400 →