Tech & AI

Why is OpenAI selling a $70 ChatGPT basketball?

by Bella Baker
by Bella Baker


OpenAI now wants a place in your browser, on your desk, in your closet, and, for $70, on your local basketball court.

The company behind ChatGPT is selling a branded basketball through Supply Co., its expanding online shop for clothing, collectibles, desk accessories, and limited-edition hardware.

On its own, the product is an unusual piece of tech-company merchandise. Alongside OpenAI’s growing catalog, it is easier to understand as part of the company’s effort to build recognizable physical products around ChatGPT, Codex, and its research culture.

The $70 ChatGPT basketball is part of “Pause. Play. Prompt.,” a campaign that argues creativity need not remain on a screen. OpenAI describes the ball as a reminder to step away from technology and suggests that good ideas can arrive between pickup games.

But it’s also just a functional basketball. The standard Size 7 ball is made entirely of rubber and contains no artificial intelligence, sensors, an internet connection, or any other technology.

The question on most people’s minds — according to social media, at least — is: why is OpenAI selling this in the first place?

OpenAI is building a lifestyle shop

The answer begins with Supply Co., which, according to its home page, “documents the visual culture surrounding intelligent systems.”

The brand started as a small merchandise operation for OpenAI employees. According to the company, workers became unusually enthusiastic about collectible cards, graphic hoodies, and blue folding chairs. OpenAI says those objects eventually became “material embodiments of company culture.”

Supply Co.’s next phase is described as a mix of “collaborations, experiments, and physical expressions of research energy,” broad language that leaves room for more than just shirts bearing a corporate logo. The online reaction to the product line is mixed.

The current shop includes a $40 “Good Research” T-shirt, a $50 ChatGPT long-sleeve shirt, a $100 Codex hoodie, a $40 Blossom hat, and matching $15 socks. Customers can also buy a $45 embroidered tote featuring Bloop, one of OpenAI’s cartoon characters, and a $25 Nalgene bottle covered in pixelated graphics.

For anyone hoping to dress like an especially well-funded graduate student, there is the $175 Research Half Zip. The Portuguese cotton fleece sweater has the word “research” embroidered across its chest and a crisp collar that OpenAI says “reminisces on our days in academia.” It lands somewhere between university apparel and a startup office uniform.

The current selection is relatively restrained compared with its archive. OpenAI has previously produced a rice cooker, dinner plates, a wooden checkerboard, a tape measure, earplugs, a hair claw, a Raspberry Pi kit, a soccer jersey, active shorts, flying discs, folding chairs, and an earlier basketball featuring its Blossom design.

Codex gets its own physical controller

Elsewhere in the same shop, OpenAI is selling a device that links to its actual software.

Codex Micro is a $230 desktop controller created with Work Louder, a boutique hardware company known for customizable mechanical keyboards and shortcut devices. OpenAI describes it as a “command center for agentic work.”

The controller is built for people using Codex, OpenAI’s coding agent, to manage several tasks at once. Its illuminated Agent Keys indicate whether an agent is thinking, running, waiting, or finished, while a joystick launches common workflows such as reviewing pull requests, debugging errors, and refactoring code.

Other controls let users accept or reject changes, start a new chat, record spoken instructions, and adjust the amount of reasoning Codex applies to a task. The device connects through Bluetooth or USB-C, works with Mac and Windows computers, and was offered with either clicky or silent mechanical switches before selling out.

Codex Micro is unlikely to become a mainstream consumer product. It is aimed at people who already use AI agents heavily enough to benefit from dedicated physical controls.

Still, it provides a more concrete example of how OpenAI wants its software to extend beyond an app.

OpenAI also wants to bring ChatGPT into the home

According to a July 14 Bloomberg report, OpenAI is also developing a portable device that reportedly looks like a smart speaker but has no screen. It could answer questions, play media, respond to messages, and control smart-home devices using ChatGPT.

Cameras and sensors would help it understand what is happening around the user, rather than relying only on spoken commands. That would make it similar to an Amazon Echo, Google Home, or Apple HomePod, but with more awareness of its surroundings.

OpenAI has spent heavily on the project. In 2025, it acquired Jony Ive’s device startup, io, for about $6.5 billion, and Ive’s design studio, LoveFrom, is helping build the product alongside OpenAI researchers, engineers, and former Apple employees.

Those Apple ties are now part of a lawsuit. Apple claims OpenAI used confidential information to speed up its hardware plans, while OpenAI says it has no interest in Apple’s trade secrets. The allegations have not been proven, and the device still has no announced design, price, or release date.

What’s clear is that while the company may still live mostly on screens, its products are starting to show up just about everywhere else.





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