Departing Apple VP of product design is joining Jony Ive’s LoveFrom design firm

On December 8 it was announced that Tang Tan, whose title is vice president of product design, is leaving in February. Now Bloomberg reports that he’ll be joining former Apple design guru Jony Ive’s design firm LoveFrom.

The article says he’ll be working “on a new artificial intelligence hardware project, aiming to create devices with the latest capabilities.” He’ll purportedly work alongside OpenAI’s Sam Altman, who will provide the software underpinnings for the project. 

During his time at Apple, Tan worked across a variety of Apple products, including the iPhone and Apple Watch. Head of ‌iPhone‌ product design Richard Dinh will take over ‌iPhone‌ development for Tan and will report directly to John Ternus, senior vice president of hardware engineering, while Mac hardware engineering vice president Kate Bergeron will handle Apple Watch design.

Apple announced in June 2019 that Ive was departing the company as an employee to form an independent design company called LoveFrom that will count Apple among its clients. While he pursues personal projects, Ive and his new company will reportedly continue to work closely and on a range of projects with Apple, CEO Tim Cook said at the time. However, despite the hype, we haven’t heard anything about any Apple/Ive collaborations since then.