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Meta’s former head of augmented reality glasses announced on Monday she is joining OpenAI to lead robotics and consumer hardware, according to a post on LinkedIn. OpenAI confirmed to TechCrunch that Caitlin Kalinowski will be joining the startup.
Kalinowski is a hardware executive who led the development Meta’s augmented reality hardware team since 2022. She oversaw the creation of Orion, the impressive augmented reality demo that Meta recently showed off at its annual Connect conference. Kalinowski also led the hardware team behind Meta’s virtual reality goggles since 2013. Before that, she worked at Apple designing the hardware for MacBooks.
“I’m delighted to share that I’m joining OpenAI to lead robotics and consumer hardware,” said Kalinowski in her post. “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.”
Kalinowski will likely work with her old boss, former Apple executive Jony Ive, on a new AI hardware device that OpenAI and Ive’s startup, LoveFrom, are building together. In September, Ive confirmed he was building a hardware product with OpenAI, describing it as “a product that uses A.I. to create a computing experience that is less socially disruptive than the iPhone.”
Outside of that, OpenAI recently started hiring research engineers for a robotics team, which is aimed at helping OpenAI’s partners incorporate its multimodal AI into their hardware. The reboot of OpenAI’s robotics team comes roughly four years since the startup disbanded its hardware research, when it focused its efforts into software around 2020. In 2018, OpenAI built a robot hand that could learn how to grip objects all on its own.
There are several companies already incorporating OpenAI’s models into their hardware. The most obvious is Apple, who will launch their ChatGPT integration for the iPhone later this year. Another is the robotics company, Figure, whose humanoid 01 robot leverages OpenAI’s software for natural speech conversations.
Maxwell Zeff is a senior reporter at TechCrunch specializing in AI and emerging technologies. Previously with Gizmodo, Bloomberg, and MSNBC, Zeff has covered the rise of AI and the Silicon Valley Bank crisis. He is based in San Francisco. When not reporting, he can be found hiking, biking, and exploring the Bay Area’s food scene.
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