Paul Meade, a vice president who led hardware engineering for Apple Inc.‘s (NASDAQ:AAPL) Vision Pro headset and smart glasses division, is reportedly set to join OpenAI‘s hardware unit by next week.
Meade will contribute to OpenAI’s upcoming AI-powered device lineup, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing sources.
Costly Exit Amid Internal Restructuring
Meade spent seven years heading Vision Pro hardware engineering and overseeing the development of display-free AI smart glasses intended to rival Meta‘s (NASDAQ:META) growing wearables lineup. His departure follows a broader restructuring under Apple’s new chief hardware officer, Johny Srouji.
According to Bloomberg, Srouji initiated a controversial shake-up of Apple’s hardware engineering unit in recent weeks. That led to several vice presidents under John Ternus being given new roles and some executives feeling they had been demoted.
Ternus, who previously led all of Apple’s hardware engineering and was Meade’s former boss, became chief executive officer on Sep. 1, succeeding Tim Cook. Srouji then took over as chief hardware officer, replacing Ternus, and launched a restructuring that has unsettled several senior hardware leaders.
At OpenAI, Meade will join former Apple executives Jony Ive, Tang Tan and Evans Hankey, who founded an AI hardware startup that OpenAI acquired last year for $6.5 billion.
Apple did not immediately respond to Benzinga‘s request for comment.
OpenAI’s Talent Machine Running At Full Speed
OpenAI’s hardware expansion is part of a broader talent push. Noam Shazeer, former Gemini co-lead and vice president of engineering at Google DeepMind, recently joined OpenAI. The company also hired Liz Wamai from Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) as head of recruiting and brought on former White House AI adviser Dean Ball in a strategy role, signaling ambitions that extend beyond engineering talent.
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