Meta has poached two more heavyweights from Apple's AI team

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AppleInsiderAppleInsider
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After luring one of Apple's chief AI researchers with a blockbuster pay package, Meta has now hired two more key members of his former team.

Text 'Meta AI' above a gradient arc transitioning from blue to pink on a light background.
Image credit: Meta



One week ago, we learned that Meta poached Apple Foundation Models (AFM) head, Ruoming Pang, paying out a $200 million sign-on bonus. Now, it seems as though the tech giant has come back around for seconds.

According to Bloomberg, Meta has also acquired two of AFM's key members, Mark Lee and Tom Gunter. The pair will join Meta's Superintelligence Labs (MSL) team.

Lee was known for being Pang's first hire at Apple. Gunter was a distinguished engineer at Apple with an eight year tenure; he departed the company in late June.

Meta's push for AI dominance



CEO Mark Zuckerberg has openly said he'd be willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build AI data centers. It makes sense that he'd want to staff MSL with the best talent money could buy.

Apple isn't the only company Meta has recruited from. The company has been on an aggressive hiring spree, aiming to pull in top AI talent from across the industry.

That includes OpenAI. CEO Sam Altman says Meta approached members of his team with signing bonuses reportedly reaching as high as $100 million.

Others on the MSL team include former GitHub head Nat Friedman, Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang, and AI startup founder Daniel Gross.



Read on AppleInsider

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 14
    Rogue01rogue01 Posts: 308member
    Poaching AI talent from Apple?  Really?  Has Meta never used Siri?  Are they following the disaster of Apple Intelligence?  One would think poaching from Apple for AI talent would be the last place anyone would look.  Or, these individuals are experts in AI, but Apple's ridiculous restrictions are preventing them from demonstrating their expertise, so they happily bailed and went elsewhere.  I am not holding my breath on Apple 'fixing' Siri, especially when they claim it won't be fixed until late Spring 2026.  Apple is behind in AI and continuing to fall behind in AI.
    blastdoor
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  • Reply 2 of 14
    AppleAlwaysapplealways Posts: 15member
    when Doug Field left Apple ,it became clear that the car project was going nowhere, now the exodus of key members of AI team- it's really worrisome when the key insiders leave. 
    nubuswilliamlondon
     1Like 1Dislike 0Informatives
  • Reply 3 of 14
    anthogaganthogag Posts: 118member
    I hope there are too many cooks in the kitchen and MSL becomes a fiasco and hopefully a dud, like Neymar in the Saudi soccer (bush)league.

    Zuckerberg is showing one way to take the lead in AI research is to poach your competitors talent.  
    grandact73williamlondon
     0Likes 2Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 4 of 14
    charlesncharlesn Posts: 1,537member
    Rogue01 said:
    Poaching AI talent from Apple?  Really?  Has Meta never used Siri?  Are they following the disaster of Apple Intelligence?  One would think poaching from Apple for AI talent would be the last place anyone would look. 
    I have to admit, this is pretty funny and not untrue--but maybe you missed the part about the $200 million bonus just to sign--god only knows what the actual compensation package is! Name the absolute top athlete in any sport and they're not getting anything remotely in the same galaxy as this just to sign their contract. All of which to say: you don't spend money like this to acquire B players. I have to assume that Ruoming Pang is the shit when it comes to AI expertise, and now he has taken some top people with him. This has to be a real hit to Apple, considering that they need top AI talent now more than ever. 
    edited July 18
    muthuk_vanalingamAlex1N
     2Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 5 of 14
    Blackwhitepandablackwhitepanda Posts: 6member
    Rogue01 said:
    Poaching AI talent from Apple?  Really?  Has Meta never used Siri?  Are they following the disaster of Apple Intelligence?  One would think poaching from Apple for AI talent would be the last place anyone would look.  Or, these individuals are experts in AI, but Apple's ridiculous restrictions are preventing them from demonstrating their expertise, so they happily bailed and went elsewhere.  I am not holding my breath on Apple 'fixing' Siri, especially when they claim it won't be fixed until late Spring 2026.  Apple is behind in AI and continuing to fall behind in AI.
    Siri is a model, which integrates several functionalities within several apps. Siri is more complex than just a single LLM app. But it is no execuse or defend Apple. 
    Even Alexa or Google could not provide a proper solution about voice assistant although Amazon is heavily invested in Antrophic or Google has Gemini. 

    Apple wants Siri to run locally. For local on-device running, former AI experts from Apple may have more knowledge with their experienced and deep researches than any others from META.

    Even Steve Jobs can be replaced. Therefore, I don't worry that one or few AI experts leave Apple as long as new fresh AI experts can come. But it does not seem to be the case.
    It will be more serious if the whole team wants to leave Apple, which seems to be the case. More and more researchers are willing to leave.

    The market does not seem to be confident about Apple when their stock has been flat since April 25 while others are hitting ATH. 

    Tim Cook has been silent. Maybe, he is preparing something. But he needs to respond. 






    AppleAlwayslotoneswilliamlondon
     2Likes 1Dislike 0Informatives
  • Reply 6 of 14
    beowulfschmidtbeowulfschmidt Posts: 2,432member
    Well, these people were obviously not as dedicated to Apple as they should have been, otherwise they would never have left such an awesome company for such a sh*thole of a company as Meta.  Apple is better off without them. /s
    williamlondonmuthuk_vanalingam
     1Like 1Dislike 0Informatives
  • Reply 7 of 14
    michelb76michelb76 Posts: 769member
    Rogue01 said:
    Poaching AI talent from Apple?  Really?  Has Meta never used Siri?  Are they following the disaster of Apple Intelligence?  One would think poaching from Apple for AI talent would be the last place anyone would look.  Or, these individuals are experts in AI, but Apple's ridiculous restrictions are preventing them from demonstrating their expertise, so they happily bailed and went elsewhere.  I am not holding my breath on Apple 'fixing' Siri, especially when they claim it won't be fixed until late Spring 2026.  Apple is behind in AI and continuing to fall behind in AI.
    There is a LOT of talent at Apple, you can just figure that out by the papers and certain WWDC videos. There are also a lot of horrid VP's at Apple.
    williamlondon
     0Likes 1Dislike 0Informatives
  • Reply 8 of 14
    michelb76michelb76 Posts: 769member
    Do you want to sell create cool stuff for the rest of your life, or do you want to destroy teen mental health and create a dystopian world? - Mark Z.
    edited July 18
    Alex1N
     1Like 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 9 of 14
    blastdoorblastdoor Posts: 3,836member
    Rogue01 said:
    Poaching AI talent from Apple?  Really?  Has Meta never used Siri?  Are they following the disaster of Apple Intelligence?  One would think poaching from Apple for AI talent would be the last place anyone would look.  Or, these individuals are experts in AI, but Apple's ridiculous restrictions are preventing them from demonstrating their expertise, so they happily bailed and went elsewhere.  I am not holding my breath on Apple 'fixing' Siri, especially when they claim it won't be fixed until late Spring 2026.  Apple is behind in AI and continuing to fall behind in AI.
    Apple’s problems with AI are not a lack of brilliant employees, money, or IP. They have the inputs. The problem is senior management having difficulty pulling all the inputs together into a compelling product. 
    williamlondonAlex1N
     1Like 1Dislike 0Informatives
  • Reply 10 of 14
    blastdoorblastdoor Posts: 3,836member
    Two hundred million dollars as a signing bonus is not something I’ve seen before. That’s crazy. But I guess there’s a compensating differential for working for pure evil 
    williamlondonAlex1N
     2Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 11 of 14
    ApplePoorapplepoor Posts: 380member
    When the side wall of a tire blows out, there is no fixing the tire. Sounds like the sidewall of Apple's AI team just blew out.
    williamlondon
     0Likes 1Dislike 0Informatives
  • Reply 12 of 14
    mark fearingmark fearing Posts: 475member
    Blackwhitepanda said:
    Rogue01 said:
    Poaching AI talent from Apple?  Really?  Has Meta never used Siri?  Are they following the disaster of Apple Intelligence?  One would think poaching from Apple for AI talent would be the last place anyone would look.  Or, these individuals are experts in AI, but Apple's ridiculous restrictions are preventing them from demonstrating their expertise, so they happily bailed and went elsewhere.  I am not holding my breath on Apple 'fixing' Siri, especially when they claim it won't be fixed until late Spring 2026.  Apple is behind in AI and continuing to fall behind in AI.
    Siri is a model, which integrates several functionalities within several apps. Siri is more complex than just a single LLM app. But it is no execuse or defend Apple. 
    Even Alexa or Google could not provide a proper solution about voice assistant although Amazon is heavily invested in Antrophic or Google has Gemini. 

    Apple wants Siri to run locally. For local on-device running, former AI experts from Apple may have more knowledge with their experienced and deep researches than any others from META.

    Even Steve Jobs can be replaced. Therefore, I don't worry that one or few AI experts leave Apple as long as new fresh AI experts can come. But it does not seem to be the case.
    It will be more serious if the whole team wants to leave Apple, which seems to be the case. More and more researchers are willing to leave.

    The market does not seem to be confident about Apple when their stock has been flat since April 25 while others are hitting ATH. 

    Tim Cook has been silent. Maybe, he is preparing something. But he needs to respond. 






    No he doesn't have to respond. You can ignore this stuff and work towards a system that actually helps users with real issues and doesn't ship off all your clicks to the highest bidder. That's what SIRI was about. trying to cap info sharing and it is a difficult issue. And AI simply steps around it by saying EVERYTHING you do is traceable, sellable and everyone will watch. 
    williamlondonBlackwhitepandaAlex1N
     2Likes 1Dislike 0Informatives
  • Reply 13 of 14
    williamlondonwilliamlondon Posts: 1,546member
    blastdoor said:
    Two hundred million dollars as a signing bonus is not something I’ve seen before. That’s crazy. But I guess there’s a compensating differential for working for pure evil 
    Yeah, can’t imagine these people were really “Apple people” to begin if they willingly go work for that other corporation, I mean, what a world of difference between the ethos of the two companies.
    Alex1N
     1Like 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 14 of 14
    kkqd1337kkqd1337 Posts: 513member
    Great scott!!

    IF those ‘signing bonuses’ are true that it unreal 

    I have my doubts to be honest 

    But going to pile on the pressure on the kids to work in AI now for sure ! 
    williamlondon
     0Likes 1Dislike 0Informatives
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