Apple Loses Another Top Product Designer After Jonny Ive

A top Apple designer — Abidur Chowdhury — recently left the company for an AI startup, according to a new report from Bloomberg. Chowdhury's departure is said to be particularly impactful given that he had a "rising profile within the design team." Apple's industrial design team, formerly headed by Jony Ive, is one of the most revered and important groups in the company. The team itself, by design, is small. In other words, even a single designer's leaving can result in an outsized impact.

Chowdhury initially joined Apple as an industrial designer in January 2019. During his nearly six-year stint at the company, he likely had a hand in the design of numerous Apple products. Bloomberg adds that he played a crucial role in the development of the iPhone Air. Notably, reports of subpar sales had nothing to do with Chowdhury's decision to leave the company. It's also worth noting that the iPhone Air, from a design perspective, is one of the most impressive products we've seen from Apple in some time.

For years, Apple's vaunted design team — said to consist of about 30 people — played an integral role in shaping Apple's success. Sure, devices like the iPhone and iMac have plenty of competition, but the thoughtful design that goes into how Apple devices look and feel is arguably unrivaled. For years, Apple's design group was led by Jony Ive. Famously, Ive was languishing at Apple before Steve Jobs noticed his design prowess and tasked him with designing the original Bondi Blue iMac. From then on, Ive and his team helped come up with some of the most iconic product designs in tech. Jony Ive officially left Apple in 2019.

From that point on, Apple's design team, which historically maintained a core group of members, has seen a significant and perhaps worrying amount of attrition. That same year, Apple's design team lost three employees with more than 35 years of combined experience. More recently, Jony Ive's new company LoveFrom poached several top iPhone designers, including Tang Ta, Patrick Coffman, and Shota Aoyagi. What's more, you might recall that Evans Hankey, who replaced Ive as the company's Industrial Design Chief in 2019 left Apple in 2022.

Apple is currently trying to traverse its way through a bit of a brain drain problem. In addition to losing core members of its industrial design group, Apple in recent months has also lost several of its top AI engineers to Meta. Most recently, Meta poached Ke Yang, an integral executive and engineer on the company's Siri team. Over the past year alone, more than 10 engineers from Apple's AI and machine learning teams joined Meta after being offered incredibly lucrative pay packages. In a similar vein, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said that Meta was trying to poach some of its top engineers with offers in the $100 million range.

Interestingly, some reports claim that Meta is willing to write huge checks to top engineers because CEO Mark Zuckerberg is "frustrated that rivals like OpenAI appear to be further ahead than Meta in underlying AI models." No matter the reason, it's clear that Apple needs to do more to convince some of its top talent to stick around.