Apple's top hardware engineering executive leaves for smart ring maker Oura
By Mark Gurman
Apple Inc.’s top hardware engineering executive overseeing home devices is leaving for smart ring maker Oura Health Oy, marking a setback for a unit already contending with product delays.
Brian Lynch, who has been Apple’s senior director in charge of home devices since 2022, has joined the ring company as senior vice president of hardware engineering, Oura Chief Executive Officer Tom Hale told Bloomberg News on Tuesday.
Oura, which was valued at $11 billion in a funding round late last year, has been hiring aggressively from Apple in recent years. In 2025, it added a new chief medical officer, Ricky Bloomfield, from the iPhone maker’s health team. Oura’s head of design, Miklu Silvanto, once worked in Apple’s design unit.
For Apple, Lynch’s exit brings fresh upheaval to a division struggling to make headway in the smart home market. Apple has been a laggard in the space for years, trailing Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google in new devices, features and third-party support.
A spokesperson for Cupertino, California-based Apple declined to comment.
Apple has been preparing a major push into smart home technology for the last few years, looking to launch an advanced display with artificial intelligence and facial recognition. It’s also working on a tabletop robot device with a 9-inch display and an advanced home security and automation sensor, Bloomberg has reported.
Lynch had been overseeing the hardware side of the new devices. Apple originally planned to release the smart display last year but the product has been postponed a number of times, delayed by a beleaguered overhaul of Siri. An update to the voice assistant is crucial to delivering personalized data to the device.
The smart display is now expected as early as September of this year, while the tabletop robot and sensor are planned for 2027.
His exit marks at least the second major departure from the home hardware group in recent years. DJ Novotney, who was a vice president of program management for the unit, left in early 2024. The larger team is run by executive Matt Costello, who also oversees audio engineering and Beats products. He reports to John Ternus, the senior vice president of hardware engineering.
Though Apple isn’t actively working on its own smart ring, the company is developing a range of other wearable devices for the AI era. That includes smart glasses, more advanced AirPods, and a pendant that can be worn on a shirt or necklace. All three devices will include computer vision cameras to feed data into Siri.
Before taking on home hardware, Lynch was a top engineering manager for the company’s self-driving car project, which was shuttered in 2024. Earlier in his career at Apple, he helped lead development of several different iPods.
Over the past few months, Apple has lost a slew of other executives, including user interface chief Alan Dye and head of environment and government affairs Lisa Jackson. The company’s former head of AI, John Giannandrea, and general counsel are leaving later this year.
