OpenAI Hires Over 40 Apple Engineers for New Project

AIbase基地

Published inAI News · 4 min read · Nov 24, 2025

Recently, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman reported that OpenAI is conducting a large-scale talent acquisition campaign, attracting members of Apple's hardware engineering team. This talent poaching involves multiple key areas, including industrial design and hardware engineering, with more than 40 Apple employees switching to OpenAI within a month.

This wave of talent loss is closely related to the activities of Jony Ive, Apple's former chief designer. After leaving Apple, Ive founded a design studio called LoveFrom, while OpenAI acquired Ive's previous AI startup io, with a transaction amount of $6 billion (approximately 42.688 billion Chinese yuan). Currently, Ive is collaborating with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to develop a series of AI hardware products, which are expected to be officially launched next year.

OpenAI

Image source note: The image was generated by AI, and the image licensing service provider is Midjourney

It has been learned that Evans Hanke, who previously served as Apple's head of industrial design, and Tang Tan, a former hardware engineering executive, have joined OpenAI's projects. At the same time, many ordinary hardware engineers have also switched jobs, participating in OpenAI's device development. Gurman revealed that Apple is very dissatisfied with this talent poaching, and some internal personnel even consider it a serious challenge.

The poached employees come from various functions, including camera engineering, iPhone hardware, Mac hardware, chips, device testing and reliability, industrial design, manufacturing, audio, smartwatches, Vision Pro development, and human factors engineering. This wide-ranging talent poaching demonstrates OpenAI's strong demand for talent, and it has placed Apple in a more severe talent competition situation.

This incident has attracted widespread attention in the industry. How OpenAI will use these newly joined talents to launch what kind of AI hardware products is something worth watching.

Key Points:
🌟 OpenAI has recruited more than 40 employees from Apple, covering multiple key departments.
📉 Apple is dissatisfied with this talent poaching, and some insiders view it as a challenge.
💡 Former Apple designer Jony Ive is involved in the development of OpenAI's new hardware projects.

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