Report sheds light on who at Apple has been departing for OpenAI

A few days ago, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that OpenAI was poaching Apple hardware engineers “left and right”. Now, a new WSJ piece offers a closer look at some of these departures.

Despite the high-profile departures of Jeff Williams, Alan Dye, and John Giannandrea taking most of the spotlight in recent weeks, Apple has been dealing with a far broader wave of losses, particularly to Meta and OpenAI.

Here’s Mark Gurman on his Power On newsletter, a few weeks ago:

Now, a new report by The Wall Street Journal adds a bit more detail on the scope of these departures:

Although not surprising, given the little that has already been revealed about io’s upcoming products, the report offers another data point about what those products may actually be.

Sam Altman and Jony Ive have already said their goal is to offer a line of products rather than a single AI device, and told the courts that their first device isn’t a wearable.

OpenAI has also reportedly been recruiting “a number of researchers with expertise in developing AI algorithms for controlling humanoid and other types of robots,” so it’s possible that not all of these deflections are related to io.

Whatever the case may be, it is becoming increasingly clear that Apple’s challenges in retaining talent to behind the fields of research and engineering, when it comes to competing companies in the AI field.

Whether the recent change of guard at the top of Apple’s AI efforts will be enough to slow this brain drain, at least in the medium term, remains to be seen.