A senior Apple executive in charge of artificial intelligence models is leaving to join Meta, according to Bloomberg analyst Mark Gurman, marking another setback for the iPhone maker in its efforts to keep up with the AI race.
Specifically, internal sources revealed that the name about to leave is Ruoming Pang, who is described as an excellent engineer and manager in charge of Apple's platform modeling group.
According to this source, Pang - who joined Apple from Alphabet (Google's parent company) in 2021 - is the person Meta has given special incentives to recruit in its "super intelligence" strategy.
Mark Zuckerberg's "Big Game"
According to Gurman, to get Pang, Meta offered a compensation package worth tens of millions of dollars per year. Meta is shaking up Silicon Valley with a series of drastic moves.
His VP of generative AI was demoted, Zuckerberg invested more than $14 billion in startup Scale AI and recruited 28-year-old founder Alexandr Wang. Meta also approached several startups, including Perplexity AI, about potential deals.
On July 7, Meta successfully recruited Yuanzhi Li, a researcher from OpenAI, and Anton Bakhtin, who contributed to the development of the Claude model at Anthropic. Last month, the social media giant also successfully lured a series of other researchers from OpenAI.
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After OpenAI, it's Apple's turn to lose senior AI personnel to Meta. Photo: Futurism. |
After Zuckerberg’s announcement, Meta launched a massive recruitment drive, reaching out to more than 45 researchers at OpenAI. Some received formal offers worth up to $100 million . At least four accepted to join Meta.
Meta’s AI leadership also surprised with its decision to reduce its investment in Llama, an open-source AI model developed by the company itself, which is shared publicly for community contributions. However, the company is considering adopting a closed-source model similar to OpenAI and Anthropic.
Responding to the New York Times , a Meta spokesperson emphasized that the company “remains fully committed to developing Llama, with plans to launch many upgrades this year.”
Data from filings with the US Department of Labor related to H-1B nonimmigrant visas reveals the reality of income in the US technology industry, salaries for professional positions at Meta are at record highs, according to Business Insider .
According to H-1B filings from the first quarter of 2025, a top AI research engineer can earn up to $440,000 a year. Machine learning engineers are not far behind, with salaries ranging from $165,000 to $440,000 a year.
Additionally, AI research scientists earn between $179,481 and $232,000 per year, while machine learning research scientists earn around $232,000 per year. Notably, an AI product marketing manager at Meta can earn $220,000 per year.
Data science professionals also earn competitive salaries. A data science manager can pocket $320,000 a year, while data scientists earn between $122,760 and $270,000 a year.
Apple struggles with internal model
At Apple, Pang runs a team of about 100 people responsible for large language models (LLMs), which are the foundation for Apple Intelligence and other AI features on its devices.
By June, Apple announced that the model would be opened up to third-party developers for the first time, allowing for a range of new iPhone and iPad apps.
However, insiders say the platform model group has been closely scrutinized by the new leadership. Apple's leadership is even considering using third-party models, including OpenAI or Anthropic, to help upgrade Siri's AI features.
Apple representatives met with both companies, proposing to create specialized versions of large language models for testing on private cloud infrastructure.
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Apple is still struggling to develop its own internal AI model. Photo: New York Times. |
Siri's AI features were barely mentioned at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in early June, with senior vice president of worldwide marketing Greg Joswiak admitting that the technology "doesn't meet our quality standards."
Still , Bloomberg notes that Apple's plans to integrate third-party AI models into Siri are in the "early stages" and that the company is still considering using internal models developed by Pang's team.
These models are expected to power Apple Intelligence features running on Apple devices including email summaries, notifications, web articles, and Genmoji.
However, Pang's departure could be the start of a series of similar actions from members of Apple's platform modeling (AFM) group.
Gurman, citing internal sources, said that several engineers on the AFM team have told colleagues they are planning to leave in the near future for Meta. Previously, in June, Tom Gunter, a top deputy of Pang, also left Apple.
Source: https://znews.vn/apple-lai-tro-thanh-nan-nhan-cua-meta-post1566877.html
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