Opal Camera Rebrands to Opal Electronics After OpenAI-Led $40M Round Makes OpenAI Its Largest Shareholder
The company will expand beyond webcams into AI-focused consumer devices. OpenAI becomes its largest shareholder following a Series B closed in Q1 2025.
WiredOpal Camera is rebranding to Opal Electronics and will expand its product portfolio beyond webcams to a broad range of consumer devices, some of which will be AI-focused. The company aims to emulate Sony Electronics as a wide-ranging consumer gadget brand by focusing on design and culture.
The transition follows a $40 million Series B funding round led by OpenAI that closed in the first quarter of 2025.
Other investors include Samsung, Peter Thiel, Seven Seven Six, and Marques Brownlee. Opal is now valued at around $275 million. OpenAI is now the largest shareholder in Opal. A source close to the deal said OpenAI does not have rights to Opal's intellectual property or designs.
Opal can work with any AI lab and is already in conversations with third parties for the launch of its next product. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was an early customer of Opal's original C1 webcam. In 2022 his team visited Opal's offices to ask whether OpenAI's Whisper voice transcription model could run locally on Opal cameras for live subtitles on Zoom.
At the end of that meeting OpenAI showed the Opal team a preview of ChatGPT. The preview prompted Opal to turn into a research lab. Since then the company has been working on an AI-powered audio product for the last few years.
That product convinced Altman to invest and will launch in the next three to four months. The audio product is currently being tested by Altman, researchers at OpenAI, and executives at xAI, Thinking Machines, and Anthropic. A source close to the deal said the device is a familiar product category and is not designed to compete with the iPhone.
Opal's audio product will launch in partnership with a specific AI lab, and the company is in talks with OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI to let users switch models. Opal Electronics plans to release two other products in the next 12 months. On its new website a looped video shot from below a glass table shows several products the company has been designing.
Opal notes on its website that it plans to remain a small company. When products reach the end of their lives the company will release 3D drawings, manufacturing plans, circuit board schematics, and software to the public domain. Opal had sold over 50,000 webcams by 2023.
It had a team of five people when it launched its first webcam and grew to 12 people by the time it launched its second product. The company manufactures its products in Taiwan. Opal Electronics declined to comment.
OpenAI did not respond to WIRED's request for comment.
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