Paul Meade, the Apple executive who oversaw the $3,500 Vision Pro headset, has reportedly joined OpenAI’s hardware division to pioneer entirely new ways to physically encumber the human head.
Paul Meade, the Apple vice president who oversaw the development of the Vision Pro headset, has reportedly left the company to join OpenAI’s nascent hardware division. Meade’s departure marks a significant shift in the tech industry's ongoing race to obscure users' vision with premium aluminum and glass at scale.
At Apple, Meade successfully shipped a spatial computing device that allowed users to arrange floating spreadsheets in their living rooms while completely isolating themselves from their physical families. Sources close to the OpenAI hardware roadmap indicate Meade was drawn to the artificial intelligence startup by the promise of building a physical product that not only socially alienates its wearer, but also confidently hallucinates facts at them while doing so.
OpenAI executives have reportedly spent months trying to translate their software dominance into a physical form factor from first principles.
While ChatGPT operates seamlessly in the cloud, our platform currently lacks a mechanism to physically strain the user's cervical spine. Paul’s deep expertise in mounting half a pound of dense compute directly over the sinus cavities makes him the perfect leader for our next phase of hardware dogfooding.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has long teased the inevitability of a dedicated AI hardware device, though early prototypes have reportedly struggled to achieve the precise level of public awkwardness Meade perfected with the Vision Pro.
Apple, meanwhile, stated that the Vision Pro roadmap remains fully funded and that the company is committed to issuing breaking changes to the way people make eye contact for years to come.