Former Apple Designer Behind iPhone Air Joins AI Startup Hark as Head of Design

Apple Designer Behind iPhone Air Is Joining the AI Startup Hark

The former Apple Inc. designer who helped create the iPhone Air is joining AI startup Hark, part of a push by that company to attract Silicon Valley talent. Apple veteran Abidur Chowdhury will become head of design, according to Hark founder and Chief Executive Officer Brett Adcock, who also runs the robotics startup Figure AI. In its bid to staff up, Hark has lured engineers from Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Meta Platforms Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., he said. Adcock, a serial entrepreneur, self-funded Hark with $100 million of his own money. He has said that he sees the business growing alongside Figure, which is developing a general-purpose humanoid robot. Hark is working on AI models, with the first one slated for release this summer. Hark now has 30 engineers from companies such as Google and Meta, Adcock said in a memo Tuesday to Figure AI staff. The company aiming to reach 100 in the first half of the year, he said. Bloomberg News reported in November that Chowdhury left Apple. He had been seen as an up-and-comer at the tech giant and even appeared in the introduction video for the iPhone Air, a new thinner model of Apple's flagship product.

Mystery AI lab that poached iPhone Air designer revealed - 9to5Mac

Two months after reporting that the industrial designer who introduced the iPhone Air at Apple's September event had left for an unnamed AI company, Bloomberg has now shared details on where he went. According to Bloomberg, industrial designer Abidur Chowdhury has left Apple to join Hark, a recently founded AI startup led by Brett Adcock, who also serves as CEO of Figure AI. There is little information available about Hark. Based on a memo seen by The Information, the startup was launched just a few weeks ago with $100 million in funding from Adcock's personal capital, and will focus on: [...] building "human-centric" AI, which can "think proactively, recursively improve and care deeply about people," the memo said. Hark's first cluster of graphics processing units went online on Monday, the memo said, though it couldn't be learned how large the cluster was. Adcock will remain the CEO of Figure, in addition to his new role at Hark, according to a person with knowledge of the move. Back to Bloomberg's report, it says that Hark has already poached dozens of engineers from Google, Meta, and Amazon, and is "aiming to reach 100 in the first half of the year". Beyond the "human-centric AI" description cited by The Information, it remains unclear what exactly Abidur Chowdhury will help build at Hark. So far, AI-based hardware has failed to capture the public's attention, with companies such as Humane, Rabbit, Limitless, and Bee either being acquired or all but forgotten. Meta, on the other hand, has found success with its partnership with EssilorLuxottica. However, there's a case to be made that most of that success was out of timely luck, as the LLM boom happened after the release of the company's first Ray-Ban-branded connected glasses. To be clear, ChatGPT was launched a few months before that, but the actual boom happened later. Meta was quick to adapt its vision for the second version of its glasses, and is still reaping the benefits of that move as the rest of the market scrambles to react. Finally, OpenAI has also announced that it is working on a line of AI-based hardware, but so far, it has only confirmed that its first product will not be a set of AI-powered in-ear headphones, or a wearable device. What's your take on what a "human-centric" AI product could mean? Let us know in the comments.

AppleInsider.com

One of Apple's iPhone Air designers, Abidur Chowdhury, left to become the head of design at a new AI startup called Hawk. Chowdhury left Apple in November 2025 and it was reported then that he was moving to an AI startup. Now Bloomberg has reported that the firm is Hawk, founded by Brett Adcock, who is known for the robotics company, Figure AI. Adcock reportedly self-funded Hawk with $100 million of his own money, and says that it is intended to grow alongside Figure AI. Where the robotics firm is developing a general-purpose humanoid robot, Hawk is said to be working on AI models. Abidur Chowdhury is to be head of design, but there are no further details about his role or Hawk's projects. The company reportedly has 30 engineers, many previously from Meta and Google, and aims to increase that to 100 in the first half of 2026. Chowdhury's LinkedIn profile still lists him as working for Apple as a design engineer. Trained at Loughborough University in the UK, he appears to have moved to the US to join Apple in 2019. He is known to have worked on the design of the iPhone Air, and also narrated Apple's launch video for that model. Consequently, he did work on an important Apple device, and he did become more known than most designers in the firm. Initial reporting of his leaving Apple, though, claimed that the departure "made waves" at the company. Without diminishing his or anyone else's contribution to Apple, this is another example of a single person's departure being exaggerated as a lethal blow to the company. As AppleInsider research shows, Apple's AI team is enormous -- and also being restructured.

AI Startup Hark Hires Ex-Apple Designer Abidur Chowdhury | PYMNTS.com

Chowdhury, who helped create the iPhone Air, left Apple in November, according to the report. Bloomberg reported in November that Chowdhury had stepped down from his role at Apple to take a job with an AI startup. He had been with Apple since 2019. The report said that Chowdhury starred in a video about the iPhone Air's features and design process, and that appearing in such a video for Apple is considered a "high-profile assignment." Adcock, who also runs robotics startup Figure AI, funded Hark with $100 million of his own money and expects the two businesses to grow alongside each other, the report said. The Information reported in December that Adcock launched the new AI lab with $100 million in funding, and reporter Stephanie Palazzolo said in a December post on X that Hark aims to build "human-centric AI." Meanwhile, Figure AI announced in September that it achieved a post-money valuation of $39 billion in a Series C financing round in which it raised more than $1 billion. The company said it would use the funding to scale humanoid robots into homes and commercial operations, build next-generation GPU infrastructure to accelerate training and simulation, and launch advanced data collection efforts to improve how robots understand and operate in dynamic settings. "This milestone is critical to unlocking the next stage of growth for humanoid robots, scaling out our AI platform Helix and BotQ manufacturing," Figure AI said when announcing the financing round. "Support from new partners, alongside the continued backing of our existing investors, reflects both Figure's position as the market leader and a shared belief in a future where this technology becomes a natural part of daily life." It was reported in April that Figure AI and UPS were considering a partnership in which the robotics startup's humanoid robots would perform some tasks in the logistics company's operations.