The man who led the development of the Apple Vision Pro, vice-president Paul Meade, is leaving Apple to join the hardware team at OpenAI, Bloomberg reported via journalist Mark Gurman. Meade was no nobody at Apple - he also led the development of the AI smart glasses the company plans to launch next year.

The Vision Pro, the expensive virtual-reality device, failed on the market. Apple now hopes that cheaper smart glasses will help it compete with Meta's wearables. The problem is that the very man who was supposed to deliver that plan is now working for the competition.

Gurman links the departure to the upcoming appointment of John Ternus as Apple's new CEO and his decision to shake up the engineering team - a move that left some vice-presidents feeling demoted. When the top gets restructured, talent doesn't wait to see where it will be placed; it leaves for where it's valued.

OpenAI is already working with Apple's former chief designer, Jony Ive, on an AI device that Sam Altman claims will be „calmer and more serene" than an iPhone - even though reports from last autumn said the company was struggling with the details. Now, with another key Apple figure on its side, OpenAI is clearly building a hardware team out of people who know the secrets of the world's biggest maker of consumer electronics. The battle for whatever comes after the smartphone has just opened a new front.