The battle for leading experts in the field of artificial intelligence continues, and this time Apple has lost. Ruoming Pang, one of the company’s key executives responsible for the development of AI models, is moving to Meta, informs Bloomberg.
Pang led the Apple Foundation Models division, which developed the large language models that underlie Apple Intelligence and other AI-based features. His team consisted of about 100 specialists. At the same time, internal enthusiasm within the division has recently waned, with Apple management increasingly considering the possibility of using third-party models such as OpenAI or Anthropic to improve Siri.
Meta offered Pang an attractive compensation package valued at tens of millions of dollars per year, which was the deciding factor. This approach corresponds to the new strategy of the company, which, having created the Meta Superintelligence laboratory, actively attracts the best specialists of the AI industry from other companies.
In recent months, Meta has already lured several researchers from OpenAI — Lucas Beyer, Oleksandr Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai. Earlier, CEO Scale AI also joined the company in a deal valued at $14.3 billion.
In June, it became known that Mark Zuckerberg personally manages the process of hiring AI talent, and candidates are offered compensation packages of up to $100 million or the opportunity to buy out their startups. Communication with potential employees takes place even through WhatsApp.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has openly criticized Zuckerberg’s policies. According to him, Meta offered hundreds of millions of dollars to OpenAI specialists to lure them away. In response, OpenAI began revising its own terms for those who chose to stay.
