Apple doesn’t often lose vice presidents, but something unexpected happened this week: Paul Meade, who spent about seven years building the Vision Pro and shaping Apple’s smart glasses plan, is reportedly leaving for OpenAI.
If you own a Vision Pro or are waiting for Apple’s smart glasses, this is the executive exit that should concern you. Meade doesn’t just hold a title — he shipped the headset and was also planning what comes next.
Paul Meade spent years shipping the Apple Vision Pro
Meade’s resume reads like a hardware lifer. He joined Apple in 2010, working on the iPad before eventually moving into the iPhone team in 2012. Fast forward to 2017, and he crossed over to the Vision Products Group.
Two years later, he was handling all of Vision Pro’s hardware engineering and kept that job for almost a decade. Now, Meade is heading over to OpenAI’s hardware division, where he’ll work on the company’s upcoming AI devices.
Apple is yet to publicly confirm any of this. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman broke the story, but neither Apple nor OpenAI has commented yet.
With Meade leaving Apple, his longtime deputy — Fletcher Rothkopf — who already leads the design team for the Vision Pro and the much-rumored smart glasses, is taking his place. That’s a serious step for someone who’s never run the show solo and a sign of how much pressure Apple is under.
OpenAI now has Apple’s old hardware bench
If this were the first Apple exec to leave the company for OpenAI, it wouldn’t be that big a deal. Apple has seen its watch designers drift towards Jony Ive’s orbit for a while, as well as some execs join the likes of Meta.
But losing a VP from its engineering department to a rival company is new. At OpenAI, Meade will rejoin Apple’s former hardware and design lead Jony Ive, Tang Tan, and Evans Hankey. This is the same team OpenAI bought for $6.5 billion last year.
Sam Altman has previously hinted that OpenAI’s first device would be something less intrusive than an iPhone. But rumors have it that the project has struggled to get past the concept stage.
This is exactly where Meade comes in. His entire career has revolved around shipping products, not just sketching them.
The Ternus reorganization may have pushed Meade out
The timing isn’t as random as you may think. Meade’s exit follows the hardware reorganization Apple did, with John Ternus stepping up as the CEO. This was followed by Apple’s chip chief, Johny Srouji, being put in charge of Apple’s hardware engineering team.
It pushed several VPs, including Meade, answerable to a new layer under Ternus. That’s a demotion in spirit for some, even if no one called it that. For an executive who spent years effectively owning a product, that’s exactly the type of change that makes often someone look for a new job.
What Meade could take with him when he leaves
More than the drama at Apple, here’s the thing that should sting more: the Vision Pro didn’t sell in volume. Unsurprisingly, Apple has reportedly toned down its headset efforts, with a redesign not expected before 2028 or 2029.
Instead, Apple could be focusing on a pair of lighter, display-free smart glasses intended to compete against Ray-Ban Meta. That program was Meade’s, and so were the long-range AR glasses planned for later this decade. Meade’s departure is more than a job change — he could be taking a map of where Apple’s wearables could go next.
It isn’t all bad news on Apple’s side. The company is still reportedly working on camera-equipped AirPods and a tabletop robot. A wearable pendant is also somewhere in the pipeline. Despite modest sales figures, Rothkopf has a team that’s already shipped a headset. But OpenAI has just hired the person who knows what it takes to get the next one out the door.
Apple will now most likely need to prove with its much-rumored smart glasses that losing Meade didn’t cost it anything.
Anurag Chawake is a tech-focused writer specializing in smartphones, apps and consumer technology. His interest in computers began during the Windows 98 era, eventually leading him to explore everything from operating systems to mobile devices and PC hardware. Anurag previously contributed to The Indian Express, covering Apple, Android, gaming and the broader technology landscape.
