OpenAI Picks MediaTek Over Qualcomm For Its First Smartphone, Customizing The Dimensity 9600 With A Dual-NPU Architecture To Challenge The iPhone

Key Points:

• OpenAI is accelerating its development of an AI-enabled smartphone, aiming to support its potential IPO possibly scheduled for this year, and has chosen a customized version of MediaTek's upcoming Dimensity 9600 chip as the smartphone's SoC.
• The smartphone will leverage a dual-NPU architecture, enhanced HDR for real-world visual sensing, and advanced memory and security features, combining on-device AI inference with cloud-based processing for productivity tasks.
• MediaTek plans to release two versions of the Dimensity 9600 chip—vanilla and Pro—with OpenAI's customized chip featuring improvements such as an enhanced ISP, LPDDR6 memory, UFS 5.0 storage, and security enhancements like pKVM and inline hashing.
• Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo projects that OpenAI could sell approximately 30 million units of its AI smartphone between 2027 and 2028 if development proceeds as planned.
• OpenAI's smartphone aims to challenge dominant players like Apple by enabling real-time AI agent inference that goes beyond traditional app-based interactions, focusing on comprehensive user state management and AI-powered productivity.