OpenAI Raids Apple for Hardware Talent, Manufacturing Partners

Ever since OpenAI acquired a hardware startup co-founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive, the AI company has been ramping up its recruiting of people who work on Apple devices. It’s even tapping the iPhone maker’s supply chain network.

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Photos of Jony Ive and Sam Altman via Getty. Art by Mike Sullivan

As OpenAI’s plans to make devices infused with its artificial intelligence get closer to reality, the company is increasingly plucking talent from Silicon Valley’s most successful device maker: Apple.

In recent months, the startup behind ChatGPT has been raiding the ranks of Apple’s design, manufacturing and supply chain teams, in addition to Apple’s team of AI researchers, according to ten current and former Apple employees and a review of LinkedIn profiles. OpenAI has also begun tapping the same supply chain network in China that Apple spent decades developing to help OpenAI with its efforts to make a new line of devices.