Abidur Chowdhury, the industrial designer known for the iPhone Air, has left Apple to join Hark, an AI startup founded by Brett Adcock. Bloomberg revealed that Hark recently secured $100 million in funding, primarily from Adcock’s personal resources. The startup aims to develop “human-centric” AI that can improve itself and prioritize user needs. Their first set of graphics processing units just went online, though details about their scale remain unclear. Hark is aggressively recruiting talent, having already hired 30 engineers from major tech companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon. The goal is to expand the team to 100 within the first half of the year. Despite Hark's ambitious plans, the concept of AI-focused hardware has struggled to gain traction. Other companies attempting similar ventures have either faded from the spotlight or been acquired. Meta has seen some success with its Ray-Ban connected glasses, but much of that advantage came from being in the right place at the right time amid the recent boom in large language models. OpenAI is also venturing into AI hardware but has yet to specify what its first product will be, ruling out certain types of devices. The unclear direction of Hark and the broader AI hardware market raises questions about what Chowdhury's role will entail and how viable these new AI products will be in a crowded and uncertain space.