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.
Please help support MacDailyNews — and enjoy subscriber-only articles, comments, chat, and more — by subscribing to our Substack: macdailynews.substack.com. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
I wonder what they are using for money to pay them? Stock options? This sounds DOA like the Pin.
I was a huge Johnny Ive fan until it seemed like he frittered away the last 5-10 years of his Apple tenure designing the perfect handrails for the new Apple HQ.
And exactly what paradigm-exploding products has Ive produced since he left Apple?
The other question is, whether or not Apple is paying too little to it’s key people or is Sam Altman paying them too much. And both can be true simultaneously.
He has accomplished nothing noteworthy! Nothing..
Jony would have left sooner but in tribute to Steve Jobs he gave his heart and soul to designing an entire campus for the ages. It was a love gift and invaluable. Jony’s done plenty since leaving Apple, not that it’s anyone’s business. To answer MDN’s excellent question, yes I would rather work for Jony than random Apple manager number 29.