Though Apple has slowly but surely upped its AI game, it’s no secret that the company completely — and somewhat embarrassingly — missed the boat on the AI revolution. Apple’s missteps in the AI space can partly be attributed to hubris, along with top Apple executives underestimating the impact and utility of generative AI software. Fast-forward to 2025, and Apple is in the midst of playing catchup as companies like OpenAI and Google routinely release increasingly advanced and powerful AI tools.
Despite being outflanked, Apple CEO Tim Cook remains confident that Apple can still become a major player in the AI space. This past August, Cook told company employees that Apple doesn’t pride itself on being the first to enter a given market, but rather on being the best. Consequently, Cook articulated that Apple still has the potential to shape consumer-facing AI in the years to come.
What’s more, Cook said that Apple is fully prepared to “make the investment to do it.” It’s only natural for Cook to try and motivate the troops, but an ongoing threat to Cook’s promise of AI dominance is the simple fact that dozens of Apple engineers and researchers are quitting and joining OpenAI. Clearly, if Apple truly wants to make a dent in the AI space, it will have to do something drastic to prevent its most talented employees from jumping ship.
Apple’s brain drain is a bigger issue than we thought
Over the past few months, we’ve seen several instances of top AI engineers at Apple leaving the company for Meta. In October, for example, Meta poached Ke Yang, a key executive who was helping to build out the next-gen iteration of Siri. A recent report from The Wall Street Journal, however, reveals that Apple’s brain drain extends far beyond top executives and also includes dozens of engineers from across several divisions. And more often than not, these engineers are leaving Apple to work at OpenAI.
Now you might be wondering: Why would Apple employees who aren’t software engineers leave the company for OpenAI? To this point, recall that OpenAI has grandiose plans that extend beyond software. Specifically, OpenAI wants to get into the hardware business. Recall that famed Apple designer Jony Ive recently joined forces with OpenAI to develop AI-powered hardware. Notably, several sources have said that OpenAI isn’t keen on developing a mobile phone, but rather some sort of ChatGPT-powered device.
Incidentally, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen former Apple employees get together to develop an AI-powered device. Recall that the Humane Ai Pin was the brainchild of Apple veterans who were unable to retain any of Apple’s product magic. To call the Humane Ai Pin a failure would be a massive understatement.
OpenAI will undoubtedly bring more to the table, with CEO Sam Altman having said that the ChatGPT prototype Jony Ive showed him was “the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen.” While it’s impossible to imagine any device supplanting the iPhone, the simple reality is that Apple will have a tough time shoring up its glaring AI deficiencies if it’s constantly losing engineers to rivals who are willing to dangle huge sums of cash in order to attract its top employees.
Why losing employees is a vicious cycle
Losing top AI executives and talented engineers puts Apple in a particularly challenging position. For one, many of these employees are incredibly talented and hard to replace. These aren’t run of the mill coders, but often revered engineers with immense talent who have the ability to develop game-changing technologies.
Second, if some of the world’s best AI engineers are leaving Apple for companies like OpenAI, Google, and Meta, it will become that much harder for Apple to attract top talent in the first place. Talented engineers often want to work with the best in the business on groundbreaking software and hardware. If top AI researchers and engineers are leaving Apple, top AI talent might not even bother applying to work at Apple in the first place. And given how slow Apple has been moving in the AI space overall, it’s completely plausible that top AI talent might find the AI work Apple’s doing relatively boring compared to what’s happening at companies like OpenAI.
In short, Apple may not only have a problem when it comes to retaining talent, but also attracting talent. If Apple ever wants to become dominant in the AI space, it will have to do something to address both of these issues. On a related note, Tim Cook during a recent earnings conference call said that Apple is “making good progress on a more personalized Siri.” If all goes according to plan, Apple’s revamped version of Siri will arrive in March 2026 when it releases iOS 26.4. If the forthcoming Siri release underwhelms, a recent Bloomberg report claims that it might lead to “more senior members of the company’s AI ranks hitting the exits soon.”
