Meta Snags Key Apple AI Executive with Massive Pay Offer
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is aggressively recruiting top AI talent, offering massive compensation packages to lure engineers from rival tech giants. In a high-profile move, Ruoming Pang, a senior Apple executive leading the foundation models team, is leaving the company to join Meta, according to Bloomberg.
Pang oversaw a team of around 100 engineers responsible for Apple’s large language models powering features like email summaries, Priority Notifications, and Genmoji within the Apple Intelligence suite. Reports suggest Meta offered Pang a compensation deal worth tens of millions of dollars annually.
This move is part of Meta’s broader strategy to strengthen its AI division, having already hired experts from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Scale AI.
Meanwhile, Apple’s internal AI efforts are facing challenges. The company is rumored to be in talks with third-party AI providers like Anthropic and OpenAI to potentially power future versions of Siri—raising concerns within its foundation models team. Morale reportedly declined following these discussions, with several other team members now considering offers from other tech firms.
Apple has also fallen behind rivals such as Google and Samsung in rolling out advanced AI features. Earlier this year, the company delayed its much-anticipated Apple Intelligence-powered Siri updates announced at WWDC 2024. The delay triggered a major internal restructuring, placing Apple’s AI projects under the leadership of software chief Craig Federighi and Vision Pro head Mike Rockwell.