Ashton Kutcher is Product Engineer at Lenovo Now
Ashton Kutcher joins Lenovo to advise the company on its Yoga line of tablets and devices.
Between Lady Gaga working as creative director at Polaroid, Alicia Keys acting as BlackBerry's new global creative director, and Will.i.am heading up Creative Innovation at Intel, there's no shortage of celebrities "working" at technology companies. Now we can add Ashton Kutcher to the list, because he's just been named Lenovo's newest employee. That's right. Ashton, who recently played Steve Jobs in a movie about the Apple founder's life, is now Product Engineer at Lenovo.
Though it might look like the usual endorsement deal, Lenovo says Kutcher will actually give advice regarding the company's Yoga line of devices. What's more, Kutcher himself says he plans to make his mark. Speaking to USA Today, the star said that Lenovo makes 'really, really, really good hardware,' and that he wants to help make the Yoga line as consumer friendly as possible.
"This partnership goes beyond traditional bounds by deeply integrating him into our organization as a product engineer as we look at developing the next wave of products," Lenovo said in a statement released today. "As we continue to push into new PC Plus product areas and lead in multimode computing, Ashton will help us break new ground by challenging assumptions, bringing new perspective and contributing his technical expertise to Yoga Tablet and other devices."
Lenovo also points out that aside from being a successful movie and TV star, Kutcher, in his role as co-founder of A-Grade Investments, has provided venture capital and collaboration for the likes of Airbnb, Fab, Foursquare, Spotify, Path, and Uber. Speaking about the partnership, Kutcher praised Lenovo's entrepreneurial spirit.
"This partnership with Lenovo brings together my love of technology and design that makes your life better. I can't wait to dig in and help Lenovo develop future mobile computing products, starting with the Yoga Tablet," said Kutcher. "Lenovo is all about innovation and strong leadership. Entrepreneurship is part of their DNA, and I couldn't ask for a better fit."
Neither party discussed the finer details of Ashton's role at Lenovo, but it seems that appearing in commercials is among his duties (of course). Well, if you've got an award winning actor in your engineering division, you might as well put those talents to good use, right?
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Jane McEntegart is a writer, editor, and marketing communications professional with 17 years of experience in the technology industry. She has written about a wide range of technology topics, including smartphones, tablets, and game consoles. Her articles have been published in Tom's Guide, Tom's Hardware, MobileSyrup, and Edge Up.
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_Cosmin_ Pfff ! He thinks that if he played an obscure CEO once... now he is very good at it!Reply
Time to not buy Lenovo anymore! -
Stimpack I don't know the first thing about him as a person. He could be great, I really have no clue. I'm not prepared to judge a man based solely on assumptions.Reply -
PinchedNerve I think I speak for the whole of the tech/geek community when I say, Ashton Kutcher!Reply
Watch the language. - G -
sha7bot This reminds me of Tom Cruise who, at one point in an interview, claimed he knew all about psychiatry. We need to stop assigning value to these entertainer's opinions when there's no value to be had.Reply
Unless it's Ben Stein. -
nevilence I dont wanna say he is gonna be bad or good for the company because I have no idea what he is capable of, but I fail to see what he could really bring to the table based on his celebrity/actor statusReply -
06yfz450ridr Ohh crap I just ordered a whole bunch of lenovo laptops, maybe they will all come with every episode of that 70s show for free hahahaReply -
Innocent_Bystander-1312890 Who knows... maybe he'll surprise all of us. He's an actor, so he's inherently creative... he might bring something useful. Then again, maybe not. We'll see how this plays out. If he is spotted with his MacBook air sometime down the road, we'll know it's all crap :)Reply -
godfather666 The man isn't as dumb as the people he plays on TV. And he does love technology - I think he can be credited for a lot of Twitter's success (or so I'm told).Reply
He can give his two cents on the design of some products, why not? And he can definitely promote the products.
I understand the negativity here, but I think it's not totally warranted.