Paul Meade, a longtime Apple executive tied to the Apple Vision Pro and its hardware program, is reportedly leaving Cupertino for OpenAI. He will join OpenAI’s hardware unit for the company’s upcoming AI-powered devices, adding to a growing pattern of Apple ve
Paul Meade left Apple once before in his career—just not permanently. He has spent more than a decade shaping products that Apple itself treated as pivotal. Now, he’s reportedly ready to do the same for OpenAI.
Meade, an executive from Apple’s Vision Products Group, is set to depart for OpenAI in the next week. His new work will be in OpenAI’s hardware unit as the company prepares an upcoming line of AI-powered devices. The move pulls him away from Mission Bay. the same place where OpenAI is assembling talent that already carries an Apple pedigree.
At OpenAI, Meade will join a group that includes fellow Apple alumni Jony Ive, Tang Tan, and Evans Hankey. The names on that list matter because they point to a specific ambition at OpenAI: building AI into devices, not just software behind a screen.
Meade’s Apple résumé runs deep. He joined in 2010 as an iPad manager. Two years later, he oversaw program management for the iPhone. In 2017, he moved into the Vision Products Group. By 2019. after a notable shift in Apple’s management. he took charge of all hardware engineering for the Apple Vision Pro.
This isn’t a one-off exit. Meade is another in a string of departures that Apple has absorbed as the AI race accelerates. In October 2025, Apple lost Ke Yang, head of the Apple Intelligence Answers, Knowledge, and Information team, to Meta. Two months later, Apple’s VP of Human Interface Design, Alan Dye, also left for Meta.
OpenAI, meanwhile, has shown a clear appetite for familiar Apple expertise. Jony Ive’s AI startup acquisition by OpenAI in 2025 put a spotlight on that relationship. Tang Tan. who previously worked at Apple. is described as having been instrumental in recruiting Cyrus Daniel Irani from Apple’s human interface design team and Erik de Jong from Apple Watch hardware.
The sequence feels personal for Apple’s leadership ecosystem: the hardware and interface talent that helped define Apple’s recent product direction keeps finding a new home elsewhere. As Paul Meade prepares to move. Apple’s Vision Products Group loses a long-tenured builder at the exact moment OpenAI is gearing up to put AI on new devices.
For readers, the practical question is simple: when more of the people who built Apple’s immersive vision and interface work shift to OpenAI, what does that do to the pace—and the feel—of the next wave of AI hardware?
Apple Vision Pro Paul Meade OpenAI AI-powered devices Vision Products Group hardware engineering Jony Ive Tang Tan Evans Hankey Mission Bay