OpenAI steals Apple engineers to build secret device

OpenAI poached 24+ Apple engineers for secret device. Meta's $799 smart glasses ship in weeks. AirPods secretly became the ultimate AI trojan horse nobody noticed.

OpenAI is gutting Apple's hardware team, poaching over two dozen engineers in 2025 alone to build their mysterious Johnny Ive-designed device launching late 2026. Meanwhile, Meta's new $799 Ray-Ban smart glasses with invisible displays are shipping "within weeks," finally succeeding where Google Glass catastrophically failed. But the real AI device winner might be sitting in your ears right now—Apple's AirPods are the ultimate trojan horse for ambient AI that nobody sees coming.

OpenAI raids Apple for hardware talent as device wars heat up

OpenAI's hardware poaching from Apple accelerated dramatically, jumping from zero employees in 2023 to 10 last year to over 24 in 2025 alone. The Information reports they've secured manufacturing contracts with Luxshare and potentially Goertek—the same companies that assemble iPhones and AirPods—targeting late 2026 or early 2027 launch. Sources reveal OpenAI is simultaneously developing multiple form factors: a smart speaker without display resembling a "pocket-sized puck," digital voice recorders, wearable pins, and smart glasses. The device would be "fully aware of user's surroundings" and designed to sit on desks alongside laptops and phones as a third core device.

The talent exodus from Apple stems from engineers being "bored with incremental changes" and frustrated with bureaucracy, while watching their stock compensation stagnate as Apple shares underperformed. Johnny Ive's involvement has become the recruitment magnet, giving OpenAI instant credibility with Apple's hardware elite who remember the glory days of iMac, iPod, and iPhone innovation. Sam Altman previously declared that current computers were "designed for a world without AI" and now we need fundamentally different hardware—positioning this as nothing less than reinventing personal computing for the AI era.

The form factor confusion reveals OpenAI's strategic dilemma: they're considering everything from ambient AI pucks to wearable pins despite Ive previously mocking devices like Rabbit and Humane as showing "an absence of new ways of thinking." The Wall Street Journal's reporting that it would be "unobtrusive" while being "fully aware of surroundings" suggests ambient always-on AI rather than something you actively engage. But with Meta dominating smart glasses and Google owning phones, OpenAI needs to find unclaimed territory in an increasingly crowded device landscape.

Meta's $799 glasses finally succeed where Google failed

Mark Zuckerberg's new Ray-Ban smart glasses with built-in invisible displays are shipping within weeks at $799, delivering everything Google Glass promised but actually works. Tech reviewers universally praised how they "succeeded in every way Google Glass failed"—they're less conspicuous, more comfortable, with significant battery life, and don't make you look like a social pariah. The gesture controls via haptic wristband and hidden display invisible to others solve the creepiness factor that killed Glass. Zuckerberg declared glasses are "the ideal form factor for personal super intelligence" because they let you "stay present while getting AI capabilities to make you smarter."

The timing devastates OpenAI's device ambitions just as they're recruiting. Meta has already normalized smart glasses through the original Ray-Bans, built the manufacturing pipeline, and solved the social acceptability problem that plagued every previous attempt. At $799 they're expensive but not the $3,500 catastrophe of Apple's Vision Pro or the $699 embarrassment of the Humane pin. Zuckerberg's vision of AI as something you actively summon through glasses rather than ambient always-listening devices appears to be winning the market's vote.

The contrast with recent AI wearable failures is stark. The Friend pendant launched to headlines like "I hate my AI friend" from Wired, with users complaining about social hostility from wearing visible AI devices and the creepy personality of always-listening assistants. Engineer Eli Bendersky noted it's "extraordinary that we critique a wearable's personality not just hardware"—progress, but not the kind that sells products. Robert Scoble admitted these devices "leave me wanting a lot more" despite initial enthusiasm, highlighting the gap between tech insider excitement and consumer reality.

Why AirPods are Apple's secret AI weapon

While everyone obsesses over new form factors, Apple might have already won with AirPods—the "ultimate AI trojan horse" that's "always on, socially acceptable, and frictionless." The new AirPods 3 real-time translation feature demonstrated at Apple's event got more shares than any iPhone announcement, translating languages directly into your ear while using your phone to translate responses back. Apple never even mentioned "AI" or "Apple Intelligence"—they just showed it working, because they understand consumers care about utility not buzzwords.

Signal's viral tweet captured why AirPods dominate: "Everyone's carrying a microphone, speaker, and computer adjacency in their ears right now. The AI hardware race isn't about headsets, glasses, or robots—it's about what you can put between someone's nervous system and the cloud without them noticing." AirPods are already normalized in society, require no behavioral change, and don't signal "I'm wearing weird tech" like every failed wearable. The A19 Pro chip makes local LLM processing "just so fast" according to developers, meaning Apple has both the hardware and social acceptance solved.

The entire premise of needing new AI devices might be flawed. The obsession with "getting people to look up from phones" feels like entrepreneurs inventing problems to justify their solutions. People at concerts filming through phones aren't disconnected—they're creating memories they value more than being "present." The smartphone already does everything these new devices promise, just less awkwardly. Until someone demonstrates a use case so compelling that people will tolerate social stigma and behavior change, the graveyard of "revolutionary" AI devices will keep growing while billions of AirPods quietly become the actual ambient AI platform without anyone noticing the revolution already happened.