Episode
Why we’re at the beginning of the AI hardware boom | Caitlin Kalinowski (ex–OpenAI, Meta, Apple)
- Published
- May 17, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 5950
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Summary
Caitlin Kalinowski was most recently at OpenAI helping build their robotics and hardware teams from scratch. Prior to that, she was head of AR glasses and VR hardware at Meta, where she led the teams building every generation of the Quest, Rift, and Orion, and was Meta’s first consumer electronics hire. Before this, she was technical lead on MacBook Air and Mac Pro at Apple, and helped engineer the original unibody MacBook Pro. She’s designed and engineered some of the hardest and most beloved consumer hardware products in history and is now focused on the next frontier: robotics. In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 1. VR—what happened? 2. The coming memory price shock and why she’s telling startups to pre-buy now 3. How the technologies built for VR became the foundation of modern warfare 4. Why humanoid robots are still just prototypes, and what’s actually gating mass deployment 5. Lessons from Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman 6. Why she left OpenAI — Brought to you by: WorkOS —Make your app enterprise-ready, with SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more: https://workos.com/lenny Vanta —Automate compliance, manage risk, and accelerate trust with AI: https://vanta.com/lenny — Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/why-were-at-the-beginning-of-the — Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0 — Where to find Caitlin Kalinowski: • X: https://x.com/kalinowski007 • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ckalinowski • Website: https://www.caitlinkalinowski.com — Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • X: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ In this…