Paul Meade, Apple’s Vision Pro chief, is leaving to build OpenAI’s devices. It is the most senior Apple defection yet, and it points the AI hardware talent war straight at Cupertino.

Apple does not lose vice presidents to rivals. That is the unwritten rule, and for years it held. Designers slipped away to Jony Ive’s orbit, and the odd executive crossed to Meta, but the engineering core stayed put. On 26 June, that rule broke at the top.

Paul Meade, the Apple vice president who runs the Vision Pro headset and the company’s smart glasses programme, is leaving for OpenAI. The scoop came from Bloomberg ’s Mark Gurman, and both The Information and TechCrunch matched it the next day. Apple and OpenAI declined to comment.

Meade will leave Apple by next week, Gurman reported, then join OpenAI’s hardware unit. There he will work on the company’s planned family of AI-powered devices. Apple shares pared their gains on the news, trading up about 2%.

The loss stings because of who Meade is. He joined Apple in 2010, managed early iPad work, then ran iPhone program management. He moved to the Vision Products Group in 2017 and has led Vision Pro hardware engineering for seven years. His deputy, Fletcher Rothkopf, picks up much of the work.

Apple’s old hardware brain trust, reassembled

One executive leaving is a personnel story. The more telling shift is where he is going. At OpenAI, Meade rejoins former Apple colleagues Jony Ive, Tang Tan, and Evans Hankey, who once ran design and hardware at the iPhone maker. Their startup sold to OpenAI last year for $6.5bn.

So OpenAI is not just hiring a senior engineer. It is rebuilding a version of Apple’s old hardware leadership inside an AI lab. The team is chasing the same prize Meade chased at Apple: the device that comes after the smartphone. Altman has described OpenAI’s first effort as more peaceful and calm than an iPhone.

That device has not been easy. Reports last autumn suggested Ive and OpenAI were still struggling to settle the basics. Meade’s job is to turn a concept into something that ships, which is the exact work he did on the Vision Pro.

Meade is the most senior name, but not the first. OpenAI has steadily poached engineers from Apple’s hardware ranks, and Alan Dye, Apple’s human interface chief, left for Meta in December. The pattern is now hard to miss, and it runs in one direction.

The timing is not random. Meade reports into a hardware organisation that Johny Srouji, the new chief hardware officer, has just reshuffled. Several vice presidents, Meade included, now sit a level lower than before, under a new manager. Some felt demoted, Gurman reported. The change followed John Ternus stepping up to run Apple as chief executive from 1 September.

Meade leaves a product line in retreat. The Vision Pro never sold in volume, and Apple has quietly de-prioritised enclosed headsets. A redesigned model is not expected before 2028 or 2029. The company has pivoted instead to lighter, display-free smart glasses, due next year, to compete with Meta .

That glasses effort was Meade’s too. So was the longer-term work on augmented-reality glasses planned for the end of the decade. His exit hands a competitor not just talent, but a map of where Apple thinks wearables are going.

Apple still has plenty in motion, from camera-equipped AirPods to a tabletop robot and a wearable pendant. It also faces mounting pressure on AI . OpenAI, for its part, is building out its own hardware ambitions, and now has the people to try.

The question is no longer whether OpenAI can hire Apple’s talent. It clearly can. The question is whether a company that has never shipped a consumer device can do what Apple, with all that talent, could not: make people want to wear the future on their face.

With expertise in digital marketing, product management, and branding & identity, Ana Maria Constantin develops strategies that resonate (show all) With expertise in digital marketing, product management, and branding & identity, Ana Maria Constantin develops strategies that resonate with our target audience in the software/SaaS industry. Collaboration and teamwork are paramount to her, as she loves empowering her colleagues to achieve outstanding results and unlock their full potential.