According to Bloomberg Business, former Apple designer Abidur Chowdhury, who helped create the iPhone Air and appeared in its intro video, is joining AI startup Hark as its head of design. Hark’s founder and CEO, Brett Adcock, who also runs robotics firm Figure AI, self-funded the startup with $100 million of his own money. The company has already hired 30 engineers from firms like Google, Meta, and Amazon, with a goal to reach 100 by the first half of this year. Hark is developing AI models, and its first one is slated for release this summer. Chowdhury’s departure from Apple was reported back in November, where he was seen as a rising star.
Talent War Escalates
Here’s the thing: this move is a perfect snapshot of the current talent war in AI. Big Tech veterans, especially from design-centric powerhouses like Apple, are becoming the hottest commodity for well-funded startups. Hark isn’t just picking up one designer; they’re on a full-blown hiring spree, pulling engineers from all the major players. It shows that for a new AI company, having a war chest isn’t enough. You need instant credibility and proven experience to even compete. And what’s a better signal than poaching the guy who helped shape Apple’s latest flagship design language?
The Figure Connection
Now, the connection to Figure AI is fascinating and probably the real story. Brett Adcock is funding and running both companies. He says he sees Hark growing alongside Figure, which is building a humanoid robot. So, is Hark’s AI work destined to be the “brain” for Figure’s robots? It seems like a logical bet. This isn’t just an isolated AI model startup; it feels like a strategic piece of a larger puzzle to build embodied AI. Getting a designer of Chowdhury’s caliber suggests the focus isn’t just on raw code, but on how humans will interact with this AI—whether it’s through a screen or, eventually, a robot.
What It Means For Apple
Losing up-and-coming talent is never great, but for Apple, it’s probably more of a symbolic hit than a catastrophic one. Apple’s design philosophy is deeply institutionalized. But it does highlight a pressure point: how do you keep top creative minds when the allure and financial rocketship of AI startups are so strong? For other hardware giants, this trend is a clear warning. The competition for talent isn’t just coming from other device makers anymore. It’s coming from AI labs with very deep pockets and grand, world-changing narratives. If your company relies on seamless integration between hardware and software—like, say, a leading provider of industrial panel PCs in the US—you’re now competing with these same AI firms for a slice of the engineering and design talent pie.
A Summer Launch To Watch
All eyes will now be on that promised summer release. What kind of AI model is Hark building? Is it a foundational model, or something more applied? Chowdhury’s hiring heavily implies a strong focus on user experience and interface, which could set their offering apart in a crowded field of raw, technical AI engines. Basically, they might be betting that design will be the differentiator when the underlying tech starts to look similar. It’s a risky, expensive bet, but with $100 million in personal funding, Adcock can afford that risk. The real question is: can they attract enough big-name talent to actually out-innovate the very companies they’re hiring from? We’ll get our first clue this summer.
