Apple Inc. alum Ed Nightingale is joining General Motors Co. to head software development for the Detroit automaker and will lead efforts to open a GM office in Seattle.

Spokesperson Kevin Kelly said there are no plans to build a Seattle facility, but GM is looking for a site that can serve as a base for the roughly 100 developers who work in the area.

Nightingale, the new vice president of digital products and infrastructure, joined GM from Microsoft Corp., where he served as vice president of research. He previously worked at Apple Inc. as the engineering director for Apple Cloud infrastructure.

GM in a statement said Nightingale "will unite our Infrastructure and Digital Products Engineering teams to strengthen the foundation powering GM’s on- and off-vehicle software."

Nightingale on LinkedIn wrote that he plans to "lead our engineering teams to deliver software products customers love, backed by reliable, high-performance infrastructure and services."

Plans for a Seattle base and Nightingale's hire come as the Detroit automaker rushes to ramp up in-house software development for an increasingly tech-heavy fleet.

The company last year opened GM's Mountain View Technical Center in Silicon Valley as part of its push to attract new talent.

Last month, executives made another appeal to potential new hires at a swanky showcase in midtown Manhattan where they unveiled plans to offer eyes-off autonomous driving beginning on one model and "conversational" artificial intelligence in some vehicles beginning in 2028.

GM has been poaching Silicon Valley talent to jump ahead on tech.

Tech hires include Chief Product Officer Sterling Anderson, who previously led Tesla's Model X and Autopilot programs and co-founded self-driving commercial vehicle company Aurora. He leads GM's vehicle software engineering and global product teams, which recently merged.

Two other Silicon Valley executives resigned from GM in the past year.

Apple alum Dave Richardson, who joined the automaker in September 2023 and assumed the role of senior vice president of software and services engineering in June of last year, resigned last week. And former Google LLC and Tesla Inc. executive JP Clausen resigned in April as executive vice president of global manufacturing just over a year after his appointment.

©2025 www.detroitnews.com. Visit at detroitnews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.