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    • Apple VP Paul Meade Reportedly Leaves for OpenAI

    By Any June 27, 2026
    Paul Meade, an Apple hardware vice president who led the development of the Vision Pro headset and smart glasses, is reportedly leaving the company to join OpenAI's hardware team. The departure follows a recent executive reshuffle at Apple.
    Apple VP Paul Meade Reportedly Leaves for OpenAI

    Apple VP Paul Meade Reportedly Leaves for OpenAI Apple is losing a key architect of its mixed-reality and wearables strategy just as it leans harder into Vision Pro and future smart glasses, while OpenAI accelerates its own push into consumer hardware.

    Early development and Apple’s XR bet

    As Apple built out its spatial computing roadmap, hardware vice president Paul Meade emerged as a central figure, leading development of the Vision Pro headset and an AI-powered smart glasses project reportedly slated for launch next year. Apple has been banking on more affordable glasses to help it better compete with Meta and other wearable rivals after the “costly Vision Pro was not a hit.”

    Executive reshuffle under John Ternus

    In parallel, Apple’s leadership structure began to shift. The Verge reports that Meade’s exit comes “as the executive shakeup under new Apple CEO John Ternus continues,” with Ternus taking over from Tim Cook. Bloomberg, as summarized by TechCrunch, reportedly frames Meade’s departure as a byproduct of Ternus’ elevation and his decision “to shake up the hardware engineering team, which left some of the company’s vice presidents feeling like they’d been demoted.”

    Move to OpenAI and reunion with ex-Apple designers

    Against that backdrop, Bloomberg reports that Meade “is leaving the company to join OpenAI’s hardware team.” At OpenAI, he is expected to “reunite with former Apple designers, including Jony Ive, Tang Tan, and Evans Hankey,” whose startup OpenAI acquired last year.

    OpenAI has already been working with Ive on an AI device that CEO Sam Altman has described as “more peaceful and calm than an iPhone,” though reports last fall suggested the company was struggling to finalize the product direction.

    Diverging hardware strategies

    From Apple’s side, Meade’s exit underscores the risks of major internal restructuring just as it tries to stabilize Vision Pro’s positioning and push into mass-market smart glasses. For OpenAI, the move highlights an aggressive bid to match its software leadership with top-tier hardware talent, potentially reshaping the competitive landscape for AI-first devices.

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