After having spent millions to hire many of OpenAI’s top AI team, Meta has now reportedly poached from Apple. The social media giant has hired Ruoming Pang, a distinguished engineer and manager of Apple’s flagship Apple Foundation Models (AFM) team, reports Bloomberg. Pang, who joined Apple from Alphabet in 2021, is reportedly moving to Meta.
The report highlights Meta employing a similar strategy to what it used with OpenAI employees. Pang was hired with a compensation package valued in the tens of millions of dollars per year, a figure substantially higher than what Apple typically offers engineers for comparable work. This recruitment strategy comes amidst Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent efforts to assemble a strong AI team for the company. Meta has successfully attracted other prominent AI leaders, including Alexandr Wang, former CEO of Scale AI, startup founder Daniel Gross, and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.
In addition to this, Meta has recently brought on Yuanzhi Li, a top researcher from OpenAI, and Anton Bakhtin, who previously worked on the Claude AI model at Anthropic PBC, alongside numerous other OpenAI researchers in the past month. Meta officially confirmed Pang’s hire on Monday. So far, the company has worked on the Llama family of large language models, including the recently released Llama 4, and integrated Meta AI, its own AI chatbot, into its family of apps – Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger.
For Apple though, its AFM team wasn’t exactly having the best of time. Apple’s foundation models team has faced considerable scrutiny from new leadership. Discussions within Apple have reportedly explored the potential use of third-party models, including those from OpenAI or Anthropic, to power a future version of Siri. These internal deliberations have reportedly contributed to a decline in morale within the AFM team in recent weeks, as engineers grapple with the uncertainty regarding the direction of Apple’s in-house AI development.
Pang’s departure is considered the most significant exit from Apple’s AI ranks since the Cupertino-headquartered tech titan began its work on Apple Intelligence several years ago. There is concern that Pang’s exit could trigger a series of further departures from the AFM group, with several engineers reportedly informing colleagues of their intentions to seek opportunities at Meta or other firms in the near future. Tom Gunter, a key deputy to Pang, also left Apple last month, a move previously reported.
The Apple Foundation Models team reports to Daphne Luong, a senior deputy to AI senior vice president John Giannandrea. Earlier in the year, Giannandrea reportedly experienced an internal restructuring of his command, with teams responsible for Siri, robotics, Core ML, and App Intents frameworks being reassigned. This change followed a less-than-enthusiastic reception to Apple Intelligence and persistent delays in delivering new Siri features, particularly those that would leverage user data to fulfill commands. With Pang’s departure, the AFM team will now be led by Zhifeng Chen. The organizational structure under Chen will also undergo changes from Pang’s direct reporting model, transitioning to a more layered approach with multiple managers reporting to Chen, who will in turn oversee the engineers. Individuals familiar with the team have suggested that Chong Wang, Zirui Wang, Chung-Cheng Chiu, and Guoli Yin could potentially assume managerial roles within this new structure.
Apple’s overall AI strategy is currently primarily overseen by Craig Federighi, head of software engineering, and Mike Rockwell, who played a major role in the creation of the Apple Vision Pro headset and now leads engineering for Siri. Giannandrea, for his part, remains in charge of Apple’s AI research arm. At its Worldwide Developers Conference in June, Apple’s proprietary AI models received a comparatively limited showcase, appearing in new features for translating calls and text messages. Other AI functionalities, such as on-device screenshot analysis and improved image generation, were notably provided through partnerships with external entities, including OpenAI and Google. The company also rolled out a new version of Xcode that incorporates code completion capabilities by leveraging services from Claude and ChatGPT.
