Ruoming Pang, a distinguished engineer and head of Apple’s foundation AI models team, is departing the company to join Meta Platforms, lured by a compensation package reportedly worth tens of millions of dollars annually, according to sources familiar with the matter. Pang’s exit may signal further turnover within Apple’s AI-focused AFM group, as several engineers have indicated to colleagues their intentions to leave for Meta or other opportunities in the near future, the sources added.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
To secure Pang, Meta offered a package worth tens of millions of dollars per year, the people said. Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has been on a hiring spree, bringing on major AI leaders including Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang, startup founder Daniel Gross and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman with high compensation.
Meta on Monday also hired Yuanzhi Li, a researcher from OpenAI, and Anton Bakhtin, who worked on Claude at Anthropic PBC, according to other people with knowledge of the matter. Last month, it hired a slew of other OpenAI researchers.
At Meta, Zuckerberg has made AI the company’s top priority as it races to keep pace with rivals like OpenAI and Google. Zuckerberg has been heavily involved in recruiting for the company’s AI division, hosting potential hires at his homes in Silicon Valley and Lake Tahoe, and often reaching out personally to potential recruits.
At Apple, Pang had been running a roughly 100-person team responsible for the company’s large language models, which underpin Apple Intelligence and other AI features on the company’s devices…
Pang’s departure could be the start of a string of exits from the AFM group, with several engineers telling colleagues they are planning to leave in the near future to Meta or elsewhere, the people said. Tom Gunter, a top deputy to Pang, left Apple last month, Bloomberg reported at the time.
MacDailyNews Take: Unfortunately, with Apple’s current “leadership” chasing their tails, now looking outside for AI saviors after missing the biggest paradigm shift since the internet by blindly focusing on a failed EV project and non-selling $3500 AR/VR goggles that should’ve been released as a DevKit, that was a no-brainer job change if there ever was one.
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Tim Cook has managed to loose another. Was it because of a lack of respect for his intellectual property, lack of understanding of the complexities of the topic holding back innovation from a bean counter perspective?
Tim cooks time has run out bring in some one who understands the issues and can keep the intellectual forward thinking team on board we cannot continue to treat new computers with phone chips as innovative?
Stop him taking this company down the self destruct Nokia path!
none of that.
it was about the money.
same with all the AI talent zuck has been poaching.
it’s all about the money.
I’d agree that it was primarily the money, but I also think not having as much restriction to developing a viable AI due to privacy concerns also figured into their decisions.
A very Jobseian move by Metaburg to try to corner the market on AI talent.
By the way, MDN isn’t posting AppleInsider anymore? I wonder why. A falling out between the two?
https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/07/04/tim-cook-isnt-going-to-get-fired-and-steve-jobs-isnt-rolling-over-in-his-grave
That AppleInsider “article” (propaganda piece) is straight out of Apple’s guerilla marketing department as are the shill comments. The criticism has never been that Cook isn’t the next Jobs it’s that he’s not the long-term visionary leader Apple needs.
“…criticism of Cook over how Apple Intelligence has seemingly stumbled”?! The authors are either liars or morons. MDNs take on Cook is repetitive and tiresome but it’s far closer to the truth than this garbage.
MDN covered and posted links to AppleInsider just yesterday:
. I’ll tell you Apple’s secret plan on AI. It is to not compete with the LLM’s. They plan to be the premium devices on which and through which people engage with their AI.
This founders when AI proves to become its own OS. Ask yourself, Do you need apps in the future world where ASI is commonplace? You won’t open Photoshop to perfect an image, you’ll give clear instructions to your AI. You won’t open Word to write a letter (most won’t), you’ll explain what you want to say to the AI, proof the letter and send it. By email? No, what’s email? You’ll say, “Deliver this to Aunt Betty.” And it’ll appear on Aunt Betty’s device.
This is what Meta is after. They see this as a chance to finally upend the Apple/PC paradigm by getting to ASI first, merging it with whatever FB looks like at the time, and creating the new computing paradigm.
Maybe Apple devices run that paradigm, but more than likely the hard work will be done on server farms and local commodity computing will be enough to do it.
I’m telling you, if Tim doesn’t see the end of Apple’s dominance within 3-5 years on this lack-of-real-AI course, he’s a liability and needs to be jettisoned.
I’m not a torches and pitchfork guy. This isn’t reactionary. This take is clear eyed with concern for the company and their employees and stockholders.
I hope three alarms are going off in the Apple C-Suite. They better be.
Maybe just me, but that feels counter to having ‘vertical’ ownership of all the tech important to Apple.
It’s interesting to see how aggressively Meta is recruiting top AI talent while Apple seems to be struggling to retain its key engineers. The shift highlights just how competitive the AI landscape has become, with companies willing to spend millions to secure expertise. For individuals who follow AI news or even manage large amounts of research files, having efficient storage and access tools is just as important. That’s where solutions like Terabox Downloader Pro can be handy, making it easier to organize and retrieve valuable documents without hassle.
The competition for top AI talent is really heating up, and Pang’s move shows just how aggressive Meta has become in positioning itself against Apple and others. It’s interesting to see how these leadership shifts could reshape not just AI research but also the tools and apps regular users rely on every day. For people outside of big tech, access to smarter and more efficient tools matters too—for example, creators who work with short-form videos often turn to solutions like capcut downloader pro to streamline editing and content management. It’s a reminder of how innovation at the top eventually trickles down into everyday digital creativity.