Apple Vision Pro chief Paul Meade reportedly leaves for OpenAI hardware team

Paul Meade is set to leave Apple for OpenAI’s hardware team, pulling one of the most visible executives behind the Vision Pro headset into the growing contest over AI devices. Meade also oversaw Apple’s smart-glasses efforts, and his exit by next week would hand many of those responsibilities to Fletcher Rothkopf inside Apple’s Vision Products Group.

The move lands at a sensitive moment for Apple, which has spent years trying to turn Vision Pro into the center of its spatial-computing strategy while also laying groundwork for future smart glasses. Meade sat at the intersection of those two efforts, giving his departure more weight than a routine management shuffle. For Apple, the loss is not just about a single executive; it removes a manager tied to the company’s headset business and its next wave of wearable computing plans.

For OpenAI, the hire fits a broader push to move from software into hardware. The company is building a hardware division aimed at a family of AI-powered consumer devices, a strategy that would place it in direct competition with established consumer electronics players. Bringing in an executive who has led Apple’s Vision Pro and smart-glasses work gives OpenAI a deeper bench in the one area it needs most: product design and hardware execution.

Meade’s move also adds to a talent war that has already pulled several former Apple leaders toward OpenAI. Jony Ive, Tang Tan and Evans Hankey have all joined or been brought into OpenAI’s orbit, after the company acquired Ive’s hardware startup io in a deal widely reported at about $6.5 billion. That deal underscored how seriously OpenAI is treating its hardware ambitions, and the addition of another Apple veteran suggests the company is not just experimenting with devices but assembling a full stack of design and engineering talent around them.

Apple and OpenAI have both stayed silent on the move. Even without public comment, the pattern is clear: Apple is defending its hardware roadmap while OpenAI is using money, ambition and prestige hires to build a consumer-device business of its own.