AnandTech founder joins Apple for undisclosed role

Anand Lal Shimpi (headshot 001)

Revered technology journalist Anand Lal Shimpi, who founded the well-regarded hardware review website AnandTech seventeen years ago, will be joining Apple to work on undisclosed projects.

The hire was first reported on by Re/code on Sunday evening after Shimpi announced his departure from AnandTech in a blog post.

Just to clear up any confusion about the hire, a spokesperson for Apple has officially confirmed that Shimpi would be soon on the company’s payroll, but stopped short of providing specifics as to what his new role at Apple might entail.

Taking into account his deep knowledge of mobile and desktop processors, GPUs and SoCs, Shimpi could be easily joining Apple to help the firm’s in-house semiconductors team develop new chips.

At any rate, Apple should benefit from this particular hire.

Shimpi, who was the CEO and Editor-In-Chief of AnandTech, is a smart guy and much respected in the Apple community. More importantly, over the years he’s developed a deep understanding of Apple-developed technologies and semiconductors in general.

In announcing his retirement from the world of journalism, Shimpi said he was “officially retiring from the tech publishing world,” but refused to comment on his next move beyond hinting he won’t “stay idle forever” as there’re “a bunch of challenges out there”.

It’s interesting that AnandTech’s Brian Klug left the publication earlier this year to join Apple to take part in helping build the next wave of mobile chips.

Apple A8 (mockup 001)

Shimpi started out AnandTech in his teenage years, back in 1997 when he was 14 years old (he’s now 32), to share his enthusiasm for the semiconductor industry. Under his leadership, the namesake site quickly established itself as a place for expert hardware reviews and in-depth analysis concerning mobile and desktop devices and chips.

From AnandTech’s About page:

AnandTech started as a site that primarily reviewed motherboards, then we added CPUs, video cards, cases, notebooks, Macs, smartphones, tablets and anything else that mattered.

For the sake of balance, some people criticize Shimpi for being pro-Apple due to the site’s continuous coverage and reviews of Apple’s product lines, including Mac portables, iOS devices and accessories — even more so given Apple regularly provided Shimpi with early access to new review hardware.

After leaving AnandTech, Shimpi will continue to advise the editorial team but he disentangled himself from day to day operations of the site, which will be managed by incoming Editor-In-Chief Ryan Smith.

[Re/code]