Apple Losing Talent to OpenAI

Apple is losing employees to OpenAI as work on the company's first hardware products ramps up, The Information reports.

OpenAI has purportedly talked to suppliers about products that resemble a smart speaker without a display, as well as glasses, a digital voice recorder, and a wearable pin. The company is targeting late 2026 or early 2027 for the release of its first device.

OpenAI has succeeded in luring Apple employees away with lucrative compensation packages, and promises of less bureaucracy and more collaboration. It has offered stock grants that can exceed $1 million.

This year alone, OpenAI has recruited more than two dozen employees from Apple who worked on hardware, up from 10 last year. Those recruits worked on Apple's user interfaces, wearables, camera, and audio technology.

One recruit, Cyrus Daniel Irani, worked for Apple for 15 years and designed Siri's multicolored waveform introduced with the iPhone 6S. Another, Erik de Jong, was a senior executive working on Apple Watch hardware.

Interestingly, OpenAI has seen an "influx" of Apple employees reaching out independently to enquire about working there. There is particular enthusiasm to work with other former Apple employees like Jony Ive and Tang Tan, who are promising to re-create how industrial designers and hardware teams used to work together on bolder products at Apple.

Some Apple employees have reportedly been frustrated with only "incremental changes" to the products they work on and bureaucracy. Some have also been discontented at Apple's lackluster stock gains over the past year.

The report claims that Apple seems to be startled at the bleed of talented employees toward OpenAI. Last month, the company abruptly canceled an offsite meeting in China for its American and Chinese manufacturing and supply chain teams because Apple executives were worried that the meeting would keep too many people away from Cupertino for too long at a time when they needed to prevent further defections to OpenAI.

Moreover, Luxshare, the Chinese assembler of iPhones and AirPods, has been contracted to assemble at least one of OpenAI's upcoming devices. OpenAI has also apparently approached Goertek, which assembles AirPods, HomePods and Apple Watches, to supply components such as speakers.