{"slug": "gurman-on-tang-tan-and-paul-meade", "title": "Gurman on Tang Tan and Paul Meade", "summary": "Apple has filed a lawsuit against former executive Tang Tan, accusing him of stealing trade secrets for a startup, while OpenAI poached Apple's smart glasses chief Paul Meade in June, alarming Apple with its aggressive recruiting of senior hardware and design leaders.", "body_md": "Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg (paywalled, alas):\n\nApple was quickly alarmed by OpenAI’s recruiting drive, which included poaching senior hardware and design leaders and ravaging several teams across its engineering organizations. The practice continued as recently as June, when OpenAI lured away Apple’s smart glasses chief. That executive, Paul Meade, was quickly shown the door at Apple and not given the opportunity to stay on for a transition period, according to people with knowledge of the matter.\n\nRegarding Tang Tan, who is at the center of Apple’s lawsuit:\n\nTan was famous for taking risks at Apple and “flying very close to the sun” during his 25-year career, according to someone who worked with him. “Tang is well known for moving fast, playing fast and loose and breaking things,” said the person, who asked not to be identified while discussing former colleagues.\n\nGurman broke the story of [Meade leaving Apple for OpenAI on June 26](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-26/apple-s-vision-pro-and-smart-glasses-chief-paul-meade-is-leaving-for-openai), writing then:\n\nMeade’s departure is a blow to the iPhone maker. He has led hardware engineering for the Vision Pro headset — once seen as Apple’s next major computing platform — for seven years. Apple and OpenAI spokespeople declined to comment. He has also been responsible for the development of display-free Apple smart glasses meant to vault the company into the AI wearables space next year and compete with a growing category pioneered by Meta Platforms Inc.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/gurman-on-tang-tan-and-paul-meade", "canonical_source": "https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-11/openai-engineer-s-lol-moment-set-stage-for-legal-fight-with-apple", "published_at": "2026-07-11 18:02:17+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-11 18:18:44.401889+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-startups", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Apple", "OpenAI", "Tang Tan", "Paul Meade", "Mark Gurman", "Bloomberg", "Meta Platforms"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/gurman-on-tang-tan-and-paul-meade", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/gurman-on-tang-tan-and-paul-meade.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/gurman-on-tang-tan-and-paul-meade.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/gurman-on-tang-tan-and-paul-meade.jsonld"}}