Meta has made a big move to hire two prominent designers away from rival tech giant Apple,likely putting them to work on designing Meta’s next generation of AI hardware and the software that runs on it.
Alan Dye, formerly Apple’s vice president of Human Interface Design, will join Meta to head up a new design studio within Meta’s Reality Labs. Billy Sorrentino, a senior director on Apple’s design team (and former WIRED creative director) will also join Meta’s Reality Labs.
In a post on the Meta platform Threads, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the two would lead the new studio and “bring together design, fashion, and technology to define the next generation of our products and experiences.” In his own instagram post, Sorrentino confirmed the news. (In response to a request for comment from WIRED,a Meta rep pointed toward the Threads posts by Zuckerberg and Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth.)
Dye has long been a prominent figure in Apple’s design team, leading big pushes like watchOS, the Apple Vision Pro, and the somewhat controversial Liquid Glass redesign of iOS 26, which designers called stunning but “hard to read.” His switch to meta telegraphs a hunger from the Zuckerberg-run company.