Apple is losing Paul Meade, one of its senior executives who played critical roles within the Vision Products Group, to OpenAI. Meade, who has worked at Apple for more than 15 years, will leave his prestigious position next week and join OpenAI’s hardware unit.

Meade will work on the next generation artificial intelligence-enabled devices that OpenAI is developing. The experienced manager will meet with names such as Jony Ive, Tang Tan and Evans Hankey, who previously left Apple, within OpenAI.

High-level transfer from Apple to OpenAI

Paul Meade took on important responsibilities in his career at Apple, where he started as an iPad manager in 2010. Meade, who oversaw iPhone program administration processes in 2012, joined the Vision Products Group team in 2017.

Following the management change in 2019, the person who was appointed as the head of all hardware engineering processes of Apple Vision Pro played a key role in the development of the product. Meade’s departure stands out as the latest in a series of senior executive losses that Apple has experienced recently.

Manager mobility in technology giants

Apple has lost many of its valuable names to different technology companies in recent years. In October 2025, Ke Yang, head of the Apple Intelligence Answers, Knowledge and Information team, moved to Meta.

Two months after this separation, Apple’s Vice President of Human Interface Design, Alan Dye, joined Meta again. OpenAI, on the other hand, is following a very active strategy, especially in recruiting former Apple employees to its team.

OpenAI, which acquired Jony Ive’s artificial intelligence initiative in 2025, acquired many names from Apple’s talent pool in the process. In this process led by Tang Tan, names such as Cyrus Daniel Irani from Apple’s human interface design group and Erik de Jong from the Apple Watch hardware team were also transferred to OpenAI.

What do you think about this intense executive migration on Apple’s hardware side?