Former Head of Meta’s Orion Smartglasses Project and MacBook Engineer has just announced joining OpenAI’s Hardware Team
In late September, Patently Apple posted a report titled “Jonathan Ive & OpenAI's Secret Generative AI Device Plan is moving forward as they seek to raise $1Billion for the project.” A new report this morning reveals that the OpenAI hardware team is expanding.
Caitlin Kalinowski, former head of the Meta augmented reality glasses project, announced that she will join OpenAI to lead robotics and consumer hardware efforts. The announcement was posted within the last 15 hours ago.
I’m delighted to share that I’m joining @OpenAI to lead robotics and consumer hardware!
— Caitlin Kalinowski 🇺🇸 (@kalinowski007) November 4, 2024
In my new role, I will initially focus on OpenAI’s robotics work and partnerships to help bring AI into the physical world and unlock its benefits for humanity. pic.twitter.com/rRDliUmO6y
Kalinowski was super pumped on September 25, promoting Orion on X stating: “Orion full-AR glasses got announced today at #MetaConnect2024, 70 degree field-of view binocular AR glasses with face and eye tracking, neural interface and SLAM, all under 100 grams!!” That energy will be going into OpenAI’s hardware team and something tells me that they might be eyeing some form of AI glasses as well.
Kalinowski stated on LinkedIn that “OpenAI and ChatGPT have already changed the world, improving the way people access and interact with information, and delivering meaningful benefits around the world. AI is the most exciting engineering frontier in technology right now, and I’m very excited to be a part of the team.
In my new role, I will initially focus on OpenAI’s robotics research and partnerships to help bring AI into the physical world and unlock its benefits for humanity.”
A hardware executive, Kalinowski began leading Meta's AR glasses team in March 2022. He oversaw the creation of Orion, an augmented reality prototype that Meta recently demonstrated at its annual Connect conference.
Kalinowski also led the hardware team behind the Meta VR glasses for about nine years.
Prior to that, she was responsible for designing MacBook hardware at Apple. With Jony Ive and now Caitlan Kalinowski on board, Apple brains will be developing next-gen AI hardware to take on Apple. It's a little odd that Apple chose to work with OpenAI and yet OpenAI is charging ahead with AI hardware to take on Apple's mobile devices. Is there a piece of this puzzle that we're missing?