Paul Meade joins OpenAI’s hardware unit after spending seven years leading Apple’s Vision Pro programme, according to Bloomberg, in a move that hands one of Silicon Valley’s sharpest hardware minds to the company already assembling the most-watched AI device project in the industry.
Meade is expected to leave Apple by next week before taking up his new role on OpenAI’s hardware team, where he will work on the company’s forthcoming family of AI-powered devices.
What Meade Leaves Behind at Apple
Inside Apple, Meade ran a unit known as the Vision Products Group (VPG), a team whose remit extended well beyond the Vision Pro headset. Bloomberg’s reporting via Yahoo Finance confirms the group was also responsible for the AI-powered smart glasses Apple plans to launch next year and for augmented reality glasses targeted at the end of this decade.
The Vision Pro itself was not a commercial hit, and Apple is banking on more affordable smart glasses to compete with wearables from Meta. Meade’s team was the engine behind both bets.
Fletcher Rothkopf, described as Meade’s longtime deputy and the person responsible for product design within the VPG, is expected to take over many of his responsibilities, according to AI Weekly’s summary of Bloomberg’s reporting.
Why Paul Meade Joins OpenAI Now: The Ternus Effect
The timing traces directly to upheaval at the top of Apple’s hardware organisation. John Ternus is set to become Apple’s next chief executive, and his elevation triggered a restructuring of the hardware engineering division. Johny Srouji, previously Apple’s chips chief, was elevated to chief hardware officer and initiated a shake-up that left several vice presidents feeling sidelined.
Bloomberg frames Meade’s departure as a product of that reorganisation rather than a straightforward poaching. When an internal reshuffle reduces your scope, a call from OpenAI becomes easier to take.
What Meade Walks Into at OpenAI
OpenAI’s hardware ambitions have been building for months. The company completed its merger with io Products, Inc., the hardware venture co-founded by Jony Ive, and in a joint letter published on OpenAI’s website, chief executive Sam Altman and Ive confirmed that LoveFrom, Ive’s design firm, has assumed deep design and creative responsibilities across the organisation.
Altman has said the device he and Ive are building will be more peaceful and calm than an iPhone, though reports from last autumn suggested the project was still working through fundamental questions of form and function.
Meade’s hire suggests OpenAI is now moving from concept to engineering. Building consumer hardware at scale requires a very different skill set from software, and someone who spent seven years inside Apple’s most ambitious and technically demanding hardware programme brings exactly the kind of institutional knowledge that is hard to recruit from elsewhere.
The race to own the post-smartphone device category is shaping up as a contest between established platforms with vast distribution and new entrants with architectural freedom. Apple still has its smart glasses on the roadmap. Meta has its Ray-Ban line already in the market. OpenAI, with Altman’s vision, Ive’s design credibility, and now Meade’s engineering track record, is assembling a team that will put a number on what that combination is actually worth.
