OpenAI is aggressively recruiting talent from Apple’s hardware engineering team. While Jony Ive’s design firm LoveFrom has long been staffed primarily by ex-Apple designers — effectively turning Apple’s once-legendary design group into a talent pipeline — the departures have now spread to hardware engineering.
The recent $6 billion acquisition by OpenAI of Jony Ive’s secretive AI device startup, io, has accelerated the exodus. Multiple engineers from Apple’s hardware division have reportedly jumped ship to join the effort.
As Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed earlier this year, the company is developing a new line of AI-powered hardware devices, with launches potentially slated for as early as next year.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
It’s already public that former Apple industrial design head Evans Hankey and former hardware engineering executive Tang Tan are part of the initiative. But the exodus doesn’t stop there: Apple is also losing many rank-and-file hardware engineers to OpenAI’s device efforts.
I’m told that in just the past month, OpenAI has hired more than 40 people for its devices group — with many of those engineers coming directly from the iPhone maker. Apple’s hardware engineering team, run by John Ternus, has been pursuing its own AI-driven hardware revival. That includes a slate of smart home devices, renewed robotics ambitions, the possibility of AI-enhanced AirPods equipped with cameras, and, of course, smart glasses.
From what I’ve heard, Apple is none too pleased about OpenAI’s poaching, and some consider it a problem. The hires include key directors (a fairly senior designation), as well as managers and engineers. And they hail from a wide range of areas: camera engineering, iPhone hardware, Mac hardware, silicon, device testing and reliability, industrial design, manufacturing, audio, smartwatches, Vision Pro development, software, and human factors. In other words, OpenAI is picking up people from nearly every relevant Apple department. It’s remarkable.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s current weak, myopic, and dithering leadership leads directly to this tidal wave of defections. If you’re interested in AI, would you rather work for Sam Altman or Tim Cook? If you’re interested in hardware design, would you rather work for Jony Ive or some random formerly low-level Apple designer who’s two weeks into the job until he leaves for OpenAI, too? A fish rots from the head down.
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