OpenAI pays $300M for the team behind Apple’s Portrait Mode

OpenAI has bought Glass Imaging for $300 million, The Wall Street Journal reported on September 15 (via Threads). Glass Imaging is a Los Altos startup that writes AI software to get more out of small smartphone cameras. Ziv Attar and Tom Bishop founded it in 2019. Both are former Apple engineers, and they led the team behind the iPhone’s Portrait Mode.

The Journal said the deal closed quietly in recent months. TechCrunch said the startup had raised only about $30 million before the sale.

The largest piece of that funding was a $20 million Series A led by Insight Partners, with GV, Future Ventures and Abstract Ventures joining. Glass Imaging announced the round on May 12, 2025, and the same release describes the product. GlassAI uses AI to reverse lens aberrations and sensor imperfections. Bishop, the CTO, described it as edge AI built “to transform Raw burst image data from any camera” into high-fidelity images, with restoration networks that correct optical flaws and reduce noise. He said this outperforms traditional ISP pipelines, the processing chain that turns raw sensor output into a finished picture. The company says it works with manufacturers to integrate GlassAI on camera platforms from smartphones to drones to wearables.

The model is tuned to each device. Glass Imaging doesn’t edit a photo after the shutter fires. It trains its neural networks on a specific camera system, down to the different cameras on different phone models, so the image comes out better from the moment it is taken, TechCrunch reported. The idea is that software makes up for the physical limits of a lens and sensor small enough to fit in a phone.

The founders left Apple because they thought improvements in smartphone cameras were getting harder to achieve, the Journal said. They wanted to rethink camera technology without working around Apple’s wider priorities for the iPhone. Glass Imaging’s zoom imaging technology was later built into a new range of smartphones from Honor, the Chinese budget-phone maker.

The purchase lands next to a growing set of hardware moves. OpenAI paid $6.5 billion for Jony Ive’s startup io Products in 2025, and the Journal says Ive’s responsibilities include consumer devices and that he has been working with OpenAI on a secretive device. Earlier this year OpenAI also invested in Opal, which makes premium webcams. The Journal places the Glass Imaging deal in a run of acquisitions ahead of an expected IPO.

TechCrunch says OpenAI is rumored to be building its own hardware, including smartphones, earbuds and AI companion devices.