Meta Poaches Apple's Top AI Executive with $200+ Million Package, Shaking Up Tech Industry

Meta reportedly recruits Apple's head of AI models | TechCrunch

Apple's head of AI models, Ruoming Pang, is leaving the company to work at Meta, Bloomberg reported on Monday. This marks the latest high-ranking AI executive Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has scooped up to lead his new AI superintelligence unit. Pang previously ran Apple's in-house team that trained the AI foundation models that underpin Apple Intelligence and other on-device AI features, according to the report. Apple's AI models haven't exactly been a huge success -- they're far less capable than what OpenAI, Anthropic, and even Meta offer. Apple has reportedly even considered tapping third-party AI models to power its forthcoming AI-enabled Siri upgrade. Sources told Bloomberg that Pang's departure might be the first of many in Apple's troubled AI unit. Nevertheless, Pang could bring expertise in designing small, on-device AI models to Meta, joining an array of talent Zuckerberg has poached in recent months, including leaders from Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Safe Superintelligence.

Meta Poaches Apple's Top AI Exec: Where Does This Leave Apple Intelligence?

Another setback for the iPhone maker could put its AI future in jeopardy, or push it even closer to using models from OpenAI or Anthropic instead of developing its own. Meta has been hunting for top AI talent over the past few months, and its latest target is Ruoming Pang, the leader of Apple's 100-person foundation models team. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg offered Pang a pay package worth tens of millions of dollars, according to Bloomberg. In recent weeks, Zuckerberg has been using this tactic to poach AI talent from Meta's main rivals, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Meta also named Alexandr Wang, co-founder of ScaleAI, as its new chief AI officer. The new hires are all joining Meta's superintelligence group, which aims to create an AI that is smarter and more capable than humans, according to The New York Times. Pang is a tech industry veteran who joined Apple from Alphabet in 2021. With his departure, Zhifeng Chen will now run Apple's foundation models team. Apple's overall AI strategy falls under Craig Federighi, Apple's SVP of software engineering, and Mike Rockwell, who took over the Siri team in March. It's unclear how Pang's departure will affect the company's AI product roadmap. The foundation models that Pang oversaw are the engine behind Apple Intelligence. At WWDC, the company open-sourced them for developers for the first time, but the company seems unsatisfied with their performance for its own products. It's now reportedly considering using models from Anthropic or OpenAI for the new Siri. Will Pang's departure speed up that process? Apple CEO Tim Cook is probably not happy right now. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman certainly wasn't pleased when Meta pillaged its payroll a few weeks ago. Both companies are likely scrambling to stop the brain drain to cash-flush Meta and retain their talent. "I feel a visceral feeling right now, as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something," OpenAI chief research officer Mark Chen wrote in a memo to employees on June 28, Wired reports. "We're recalibrating comp, and we're scoping out creative ways to recognize and reward top talent." OpenAI also recently boosted its security to protect its IP from its Chinese rivals. It added fingerprint scans, enhanced vetting of staff, and hired military experts to protect important data, The Financial Times reports.

Apple Loses Its Top AI Models Executive to Meta's Hiring Spree

Apple Inc.'s top executive in charge of artificial intelligence models is leaving for Meta Platforms Inc., another setback in the iPhone maker's struggling AI efforts. Ruoming Pang, a distinguished engineer and manager in charge of the company's Apple foundation models team, is departing, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Pang, who joined Apple from Alphabet Inc. in 2021, is the latest big hire for Meta's new superintelligence team, said the people, who declined to be named discussing unannounced personnel moves.

Meta Poached Apple's Pang With Pay Package Over $200 Million

Meta Platforms Inc. has made unusually high compensation offers to new members of its "superintelligence" team -- including a more than $200 million package for a former Apple Inc. distinguished engineer. Meta hired Ruoming Pang, who ran Apple's AI models team, with a pay package in the hundreds of millions over a several-year period, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who declined to be named discussing unannounced compensation details. Apple didn't try to match the offer, as it far exceeds pay at the company for leaders other than Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook.

Apple Loses Top AI Models Exec to Meta's Hiring Spree

Apple Inc.'s top executive in charge of artificial intelligence models is leaving for Meta Platforms Inc., another setback in the iPhone maker's struggling AI efforts. Ruoming Pang, a distinguished engineer and manager in charge of the company's Apple foundation models team, is departing, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Pang, who joined Apple from Alphabet Inc. in 2021, is the latest big hire for Meta's new superintelligence group, said the people, who declined to be named discussing unannounced personnel moves. 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. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports on the latest with the tech giants. (Source: Bloomberg)

Zuckerberg's Meta Superintelligence Labs poaches top AI talent in Silicon Valley

July 8 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab is racing to secure top artificial intelligence talent for its newly created Superintelligence Labs to better compete with rivals including OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. The Facebook and Instagram parent's aggressive hiring for its unified AI initiative has intensified the talent war in Silicon Valley. It also follows senior staff departures and a poor reception for Meta's latest open-source Llama 4 model, challenges that have allowed Google, OpenAI and China's DeepSeek to seize momentum in the AI race. In June, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Meta had offered his employees bonuses of $100 million to recruit them. Here is a list of the new recruits at Meta: ALEXANDR WANG Meta hired the former Scale AI CEO to head the new division as chief AI officer, according to a memo reviewed by Reuters. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also hired some Scale AI staff after the company invested $14.3 billion in the data-labeling startup. NAT FRIEDMAN The former GitHub CEO will co-lead the unit with Wang and head the company's work on AI products and applied research. Friedman co-founded venture capital firm NFDG, which has backed high-profile startups including Safe Superintelligence, Perplexity and Figma. DANIEL GROSS The former CEO of AI startup Safe Superintelligence has joined the team to lead the AI products division, sources told Reuters. Gross had co-founded NFDG. RUOMING PANG Pang was the head of Apple's Foundation Models team and responsible for advanced AI features, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. He joined Meta with a multi-million-dollar compensation package, according to Bloomberg News. TRAPIT BANSAL The AI researcher joined OpenAI in 2022, where he played a key role in developing the "o-series" reasoning models. Bansal has directly worked with OpenAI and Safe Superintelligence co-founder Ilya Sutskever, according to his LinkedIn page. SHUCHAO BI Bi joined OpenAI in 2024 after working for over 10 years at YouTube and Google. He co-founded YouTube Shorts and built multi-stage deep learning models to optimize Google Ads performance, according to his LinkedIn page. HUIWEN CHANG Chang joined OpenAI in 2023 after working as a Research Scientist at Google for more than four years, according to her LinkedIn page. She is a co-creator of GPT-4o, OpenAI's multimodal model, and invented MaskGIT and Muse text-to-image architectures at Google Research. JI LIN Lin joined OpenAI in 2023, where he contributed to building advanced multimodal reasoning systems and Operator reasoning stack, OpenAI's computer-using agent architecture. JOEL POBAR Pobar joined Anthropic in 2023, where he oversaw infrastructure and inference pipelines for large language models. He also worked at Meta for about 11 years. JACK RAE Rae was a pre‑training technical lead for Google DeepMind's Gemini and spearheaded the reasoning development for Gemini 2.5. HONGYU REN Ren joined OpenAI in 2023, co-creating multiple o‑series and GPT‑4o models. He helped lead post-training efforts for the ChatGPT maker's most advanced reasoning models. JOHAN SCHALKWYK Schalkwyk was a former Google Fellow and oversaw major research and product integrations in speech AI. He has joined Meta Superintelligence Labs as a Voice Lead, according to his LinkedIn page. PEI SUN Sun worked on post-training, coding and reasoning for Gemini at Google DeepMind. He previously created the last two generations of self-driving unit Waymo's perception models. JIAHUI YU Yu joined OpenAI in 2023. Previously, he led the perception team at the AI startup. He co-created o3, o4-mini, GPT-4.1 and GPT-4o models. SHENGJIA ZHAO Zhao worked as a research scientist at OpenAI. He co-created ChatGPT, GPT-4, all mini models, 4.1 and o3. Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese, Jaspreet Singh and Kritika Lamba in Bengaluru; Editing by Shreya Biswas Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Artificial Intelligence

Apple's top AI executive Ruoming Pang leaves for Meta, Bloomberg News reports

July 7 (Reuters) - Apple's (AAPL.O), opens new tab top executive in charge of artificial intelligence models, Ruoming Pang, is leaving the company for Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab, Bloomberg News reported on Monday, citing people with knowledge of the matter. Pang, manager in charge of the company's Apple foundation models team, will join Meta's new superintelligence team for a compensation package worth millions of dollars per year, the report added. Meta and Apple did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. The development comes as tech giants such as Meta aggressively chase high-profile acquisitions and offer multi-million-dollar pay packages to attract top talent in the race to lead the next wave of AI. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reorganized the company's AI efforts under a new division called Meta Superintelligence Labs, Reuters reported last week. The division will be headed by Alexandr Wang, former CEO of data labeling startup Scale AI. He will be the chief AI officer of the new initiative at the social media giant, according to a source. Last month, Meta invested in Scale AI in a deal that valued the data-labeling startup at $29 billion and brought in its 28-year-old CEO Wang. Reporting by Kritika Lamba in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Artificial Intelligence

Apple Reportedly Loses Key AI Mind

The iPhone maker’s quiet AI ambitions just took a major hit as Meta doubles down on its war with OpenAI and Google. Apple has kept a low profile in the artificial intelligence arms race. But now, a major talent loss is raising fresh questions about whether the iPhone maker is falling behind. According to Bloomberg, Meta has hired Ruoming Pang, a high-level engineer who led Apple’s foundation models team. Pang, a former Google veteran and key architect behind the large language models (LLMs) powering Apple Intelligence, will now join Meta’s elite AI unit focused on building superintelligent systems. His exit is a significant blow for Apple, especially at a time when the company is trying to convince the public and developers that it’s serious about generative AI. He was in charge of the team of roughly 100 engineers building the foundational technology behind Apple Intelligence, the suite of AI features recently announced at the company’s WWDC event. On his LinkedIn page, Pang described his role as leading the team that develops the foundation models that power Apple Intelligence. Think of foundation models as the base engine for AI. These massive, complex models, also known as Large Language Models (LLMs), are trained on vast amounts of data and can be adapted to perform a wide range of tasks, from summarizing your emails to generating images. Pang's team was responsible for every aspect of these models, from the training framework (AXLearn) and inference optimization (making the AI run efficiently on your device) to its multi-modal capabilities (the ability to understand both text and images). Just last month, Pang celebrated his team's work in a LinkedIn post following Apple's developer conference. “At WWDC we introduce a new generation of LLMs developed to enhance the Apple Intelligence features," he wrote. "I'm very excited about the progress we have made since last year and would like to take this opportunity to thank our team and collaborators. It has been a true privilege to work with you all!†Pang joined Apple in 2021 after a 15 year career at Google. His departure now raises serious questions about Apple's ability to retain top talent as it tries to play catch up in the AI arms race. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg and Meta are not just participating in the talent war; they are its most aggressive combatants. In a relentless push to build what he calls Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), or "superintelligence"â€"AI systems that can reason and think at or above human levelsâ€"Zuckerberg has been personally courting top researchers from across the industry. Meta is reportedly offering multi million dollar compensation packages to lure talent from rivals, particularly OpenAI. This "hiring spree" has seen Meta assemble a dream team of AI pioneers, including former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. By convincing Pang to leave Apple, Zuckerberg has shown that no company is safe from his talent raid. The move comes at a vulnerable moment for Apple. The company has faced internal debate over whether to rely on its in house models or strike deeper partnerships with third parties like OpenAI for future versions of Siri. This uncertainty has reportedly impacted morale within the AI division, and Pang's exit could trigger a wider exodus of talent. For Apple, losing the mind behind its core AI models is a critical setback. For Meta, it’s another high profile victory in its audacious, high stakes quest to dominate the next era of computing. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Meta just hired Apple's head of foundation models - 9to5Mac

Apple's top executive overseeing its in-house AI models is leaving the company, and heading to Meta. As reported by Bloomberg, Ruoming Pang is bound to Menlo Park, and joining Mark Zuckerberg's all-star Meta Superintelligence Labs group, announced last week. Pang joined Apple from Google in 2021, and had been managing the roughly 100-person team behind the models that power Apple Intelligence features like Genmoji, Priority Notifications, and on-device text summarization. His exit marks yet another blow to Apple's efforts to build competitive AI models in-house. Pang is said to have received a multi-million-dollar annual offer from Meta, as part of Mark Zuckerberg's aggressive push to assemble a dream team of AI talent, and he wasn't the only hire reportedly confirmed today: "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." Bloomberg notes that Pang's group had been central to Apple's plans for a next-gen Siri experience, even as internal debate reportedly mounted over whether to stick with its own models or embrace third-party options like OpenAI's or Anthropic's models. In recent months, Meta has brought in big names like Scale AI's Alexandr Wang, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, OpenAI's Yuanzhi Li, and Safe Superintelligence CEO Daniel Gross. Sources tell Bloomberg that Pang's departure might not be the last: "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." The AFM team will now be led by Zhifeng Chen. Unlike the previous structure, where most engineers reported directly to Pang, the new hierarchy introduces a more distributed management structure, with multiple managers possibly including Chong Wang, Zirui Wang, Chung-Cheng Chiu, and Guoli Yin.

Meta poached Apple's head of foundation models with $200M offer - 9to5Mac

Earlier this week, Ruoming Pang, the executive who until recently led Apple's AI models team, left the company to join Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Superintelligence Labs, or MSL. Now, as reported by Bloomberg, we know just what it took to lure him away. According to the report, Meta offered Pang one of the largest packages seen (yet) in the AI brain-poaching wars, with the promise of more than $200 million spread out over multiple years. As Mark Gurman and Riley Griffin detailed: "The compensation packages for hires to Meta superintelligence labs, or MSL, are comprised of a base salary, a signing bonus and Meta shares, with the stock as the weightiest part of the package. The salary and bonus to join are often significant cash payments. In cases where a recruit would have to walk away from significant startup equity to join Meta, the signing bonus may be higher to account for that lost opportunity, the people said." Given the disproportionate amount, which reportedly exceeds even Apple CEO Tim Cook's compensation, the company didn't try to match the offer. In the way it is structured, Pang won't see the full payout unless he sticks around and the stock performs well, which is common practice in Silicon Valley. Still, it shows just how aggressive Meta is in its push to build out its MSL division. Interestingly, the $200M figure comes days after Meta's CTO, Andrew Bosworth, downplayed Meta's recruiting efforts, after OpenAI's Sam Altman claimed that his researchers were being offered US$100M to jump ship. As reported by The Verge, in a recent all-hands meeting, Bosworth said: "Sam is just being dishonest here. (...) He's suggesting that we're doing this for every single person... Look, you guys, the market's hot. It's not that hot." As Bloomberg reported earlier in the week, Pang's exit might be just the beginning, as several engineers from his former team are said to be considering offers from Meta or planning exits of their own. Following Pang's departure, Apple appointed Zhifeng Chen as the new Apple Foundation Models team lead, and introduced a more distributed management structure, with responsibilities split among other senior engineers.

Apple Loses Key AI Executive to Meta's Multimillion-Dollar Hiring Spree

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been offering AI engineers massive pay packages to poach them from other companies, and a key Apple engineering manager has decided to take the deal, according to Bloomberg. Ruoming Pang, who manages Apple's foundation models team, is moving from Apple to Meta. He was in charge of a team with approximately 100 employees that work on Apple's large language models. Models developed by Pang's team are used for Apple Intelligence features like email summaries, Priority Notifications, and Genmoji. Meta lured Pang with a deal worth tens of millions of dollars per year. Meta has also scooped up AI experts from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Scale AI. Rumors suggest that Apple has been considering relying on technology from Anthropic or OpenAI for a future LLM version of Siri, rather than using the models it has been working on. Those discussions have reportedly impacted the morale of the foundation models team that Pang is leaving. Other engineers on the team are also mulling offers from other companies. Apple is struggling to catch up to competitors that have more advanced AI features, including Google and Samsung. Earlier this year, Apple delayed the Apple Intelligence Siri features that it had promised at WWDC 2024, and the delay led to a restructuring of its AI teams. Apple's AI efforts are now being overseen by Apple's software chief Craig Federighi and Mike Rockwell, who led Vision Pro development.

Meta Offered Apple AI Executive Over $200 Million to Leave

Meta offered one of Apple's top artificial intelligence executives over $200 million to lure him away from the company, Bloomberg reports. Ruoming Pang, who until recently led Apple's foundation models team, departed the company to join Meta's Superintelligence Labs, a newly established division tasked with building advanced AI systems capable of performing at or beyond human-level intelligence. At Apple, he was in charge of a team with approximately 100 employees that work on Apple's large language models. Models developed by Pang's team are used for Apple Intelligence features like email summaries, Priority Notifications, and Genmoji. People familiar with the matter speaking to Bloomberg said Meta's offer to Pang includes a substantial base salary, a signing bonus, and a large stock award that forms the majority of the compensation. The full payout is contingent upon performance milestones and continued employment over several years. Apple apparently did not even attempt to match the offer. The proposed sum significantly exceeds the compensation of all Apple employees, other than that of CEO Tim Cook. Pang's compensation is among the highest ever offered in a corporate setting, rivaling packages for chief executives at major global banks. In a podcast interview last month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Meta had been offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million to attract top talent: "[Meta] started making these giant offers to a lot of people on our team. You know, like $100 million signing bonuses, more than that in compensation per year." Apple has reportedly appointed Zhifeng Chen as the new head of its Foundation Models team and implemented more a distributed management structure, with responsibilities split among several senior engineers. In addition to Pang, Meta's Superintelligence Labs now includes prominent figures such as former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, AI startup founder Daniel Gross, and Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang.

Meta poaches Apple Intelligence executive amid larger leadership restructure

Apple's internal leadership restructuring around AI and ML continues after Meta's industry-wide poaching program snipes a top executive from the Apple Intelligence team. Meta has been struggling to do anything impactful with its AI platform. It's another significant dud after the dramatic name change in pursuit of the still-fictional metaverse, and now the company is throwing money at the problem in hopes of catching up with the AI industry. Apple is the latest company affected by industry-wide poaching efforts from Meta. According to Bloomberg, the head of Apple's foundation models team, Ruoming Pang, has been poached by Meta with a significant pay package. The Foundation Model team will now be run by Zhifeng Chen, with multiple managers reporting to them. New managers in this structure allegedly include Chong Wang, Zirui Wang, Chung-Cheng Chiu, and Guoli Yin. The language of the article has the usual breathless excitement of yet another Apple executive departure -- painting a picture of woe and failure within the company. However, beyond the poaching from Meta via a pay package worth tens of millions of dollars per year, there's little more than hearsay from anonymous tipsters and speculation on the environment at Apple. There's a suggestion that Pang's departure could be a sign that Apple's AI teams could be on the brink of crumbling. People familiar with the matter suggest that Apple employees have even discussed leaving Apple at an indeterminate time for Meta or elsewhere. The language around a report on Tom Gunter's departure was similar. There's a suggestion that Apple has an AI brain drain that it can't salvage after repeated blunders. Meta is allegedly paying significantly more to AI engineers versus Apple. That, and there are rumors from more anonymous folk about disgruntled employees within the company. Apparently, Apple's discussions with Anthropic and OpenAI about bringing private and secure versions of their models to Private Cloud Compute sparked frustration within the company. There's some rumor, however unlikely, that Apple would even abandon Apple Intelligence as a Siri backend, which Pang's team was working on. As usual, it's the trademark doom cycle for Apple. Every departure, poaching, and disgruntled employee is somehow a sign of some kind of rot that's killing the fruit instead of the turnover expected at big companies. The reality is that there are thousands of employees at these tech companies. They're people with bills to pay, goals, hopes, and frustrations like everyone else. Apple is a terribly difficult environment to work in. While rewarding, it's secretive, and Apple has been known to not pay as much as competitors, hoping the merit of working for Apple is enough draw. Engineers, especially in the AI space, like having their work published. It's valuable and gives them bargaining powers in the dynamic workspace. Meta's pursuit of another possibly fictional technology, the so-called "AI Superintelligence," is a boon for engineers looking to rake in some well-deserved cash and recognition for their work. While Pang has been with Apple since 2022, previously at Alphabet, the company will surely push on without him and whoever else decides to take Meta's massive offers. Apple's approach to AI has been different from its competitors so far. Inwardly, there's surely some frustration at the reporting on how terrible Apple Intelligence apparently is, but outwardly, the company continues to push the narrative that it's running a different race. While Apple Intelligence improves with time, inevitably catching up with the other AI companies that have hit a reasoning ceiling, the company is giving users an abundance of options. Apple's power in AI and all technology isn't bound to a single entity within the company or a single technology like AI -- it's bound to the ecosystem of products and its ability to provide access to private and secure technologies. So, instead of getting on the doom cycle, let's celebrate the potential of what's going on with Apple and AI. Soon, we could get contextual Apple Intelligence, Siri powered by an LLM backend, and the ability to use third-party models via Private Cloud Compute.

Apple loses its top AI models executive to Meta's hiring spree

Apple Inc.'s top executive in charge of artificial intelligence models is leaving for Meta Platforms Inc., another setback in the iPhone maker's struggling AI efforts. Ruoming Pang, a distinguished engineer and manager in charge of the company's Apple foundation models team, is departing, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Pang, who joined Apple from Alphabet Inc. in 2021, is the latest big hire for Meta's new superintelligence team, said the people, who declined to be named discussing unannounced personnel moves. 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. Meta declined to comment. Apple and Pang didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. 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. In June, Apple announced that those models would be opened up to third-party developers for the first time, allowing for a range of new iPhone and iPad apps. But internally, the foundation models team has come under scrutiny from new leadership, which is exploring the use of third-party models, including from either OpenAI or Anthropic, to power a new version of Siri. Those internal discussions have soured some of the morale on the foundation models team, also known as AFM, in recent weeks. Read More: Apple Weighs Using Outside AI to Power Siri in Major Shift While the company has explored a move to a third-party solution to power the AI in the new Siri, it has simultaneously been working on a new version of Siri based on the models developed by Pang's group. Those models also power Apple Intelligence features that run on Apple devices including email and web article summaries, Genmoji and Priority Notifications. The major departure, the most significant in Apple's AI ranks since the company started working on Apple Intelligence a few years ago, underscores the heightened competition for talent in the emerging space. Meta has been making offers to the world's top engineers worth many millions of dollars per year -- significantly more than what the iPhone maker pays its engineers doing similar work. 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. The foundation models team reports to Daphne Luong, a top deputy to AI senior vice president John Giannandrea. Earlier this year, Giannandrea was sidelined internally and saw Siri, robotics, Core ML frameworks and other consumer product-related teams stripped from his command. That came after a poor response to Apple Intelligence and frequent delays for new Siri features. With Pang's departure, the AFM team will now be run by Zhifeng Chen. In a change from a structure under Pang where most of the engineers reported to him directly, there will be a new organizational layout that includes multiple managers reporting to Chen, who will then have engineers reporting to them. People close to the team indicate that Chong Wang, Zirui Wang, Chung-Cheng Chiu and Guoli Yin could be possible managers in the new structure. Read More: Meta Adds Startup Founder Gross to New AI Superintelligence Lab Apple's AI strategy is now run primarily by Craig Federighi, Apple's head of software engineering, and Mike Rockwell, who helped create the Apple Vision Pro headset and now leads engineering for Siri. For his part, Giannandrea is in charge of Apple's AI research arm. In June, at its Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple's own AI only got a small showing, appearing in new features for translating calls and text messages. The few other AI features, including analysis of on-device screenshots and improved image generation, came courtesy of partners, including OpenAI and Google. The company also rolled out a new version of Xcode that can handle code completion by tapping into Claude and ChatGPT.

Apple's AI efforts take a hit as top exec joins Meta

Meta is ramping up its AI ambitions by hiring away one of Apple's top artificial-intelligence executives. Ruoming Pang, who led Apple's foundation models team, is leaving the company to join Meta's new "superintelligence" group, Bloomberg reports. Pang joined Apple in 2021 after leaving an engineering position at Alphabet. At Apple, he oversaw a team of roughly 100 people working on the large language models behind Apple Intelligence and Siri. His departure marks a major loss for Apple's AI efforts at a time when the company is under pressure to catch up to rivals like Google and OpenAI. Meta confirmed Pang's hiring on Monday. The company reportedly offered him a compensation package worth tens of millions of dollars per year. It's the latest in a string of high-profile AI hires for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has brought on Scale AI's Alexandr Wang, startup founder Daniel Gross, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and multiple researchers from OpenAI and Anthropic in recent months. The aggressive hiring spree comes as Zuckerberg repositions Meta around AI, aiming to build "superintelligence" models that can handle tasks as well as -- or even better than -- humans. Meta has restructured its AI teams to focus on this goal and plans to spend tens of billions of dollars this year on related infrastructure and talent. At Apple, Pang's foundation models team has faced internal challenges. Leadership changes have reportedly led to uncertainty about the team's direction, as Apple considers bringing in third-party models from OpenAI or Anthropic to power a revamped Siri. That shift has reportedly hurt morale on Pang's team, with more departures potentially on the horizon. His deputy, Tom Gunter, left Apple last month. Pang's exit is significant because his group's models were expected to many of Apple's upcoming AI features, including Genmoji, email and article summaries, and prioritized notifications. They also underpin the new version of Siri currently in development. With Pang leaving, Apple's foundation models team will reportedly be led by senior distinguished engineer (and former Googler) Zhifeng Chen -- under a restructured organization that spreads management across several senior engineers. While Apple's AI strategy has seen some new features this year, including on-device translation and partnerships with OpenAI and Google, its own models have struggled to match the breakthroughs seen elsewhere. Meta, meanwhile, is betting that hiring top talent like Pang will help it accelerate AI development and catch up with leaders in the field. The hiring highlights the intensifying battle for AI talent among Silicon Valley giants as the race to develop more advanced, human-like AI systems heats up.

Mark Zuckerberg is determined to build an AI superteam -- and he's poaching from Sam Altman with multimillion-dollar pay packages

Meta Platforms, under the leadership of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has ignited a fierce battle for artificial intelligence (AI) talent, offering compensation packages that have stunned Silicon Valley and the global tech industry. In 2025, Meta's aggressive hiring spree has seen the company extend offers to AI experts that rival the pay of professional athletes and Fortune 500 CEOs -- and even Zuckerberg himself. Zuckerberg reportedly maintains a "literal list" of AI all-stars he is targeting for Meta's new Superintelligence Labs, which is tasked with consolidating Meta's foundational AI research and product development. Zuckerberg's goal is to build advanced AI reasoning models and agents that can compete at the highest level. The list includes top engineers and researchers with the rarest, most valuable skills in the tech hiring market: those two words "artificial" and "intelligence." Meta's aggressive recruitment is driven by the need to catch up with rivals such as OpenAI, Google, and DeepSeek, especially after the tepid reception of Meta's Llama 4 AI model. Meta's massive bet on AI talent is reshaping the landscape of tech compensation and intensifying the global race for artificial intelligence supremacy. The offers are so lucrative that they have prompted OpenAI's leadership to recalibrate their own compensation strategies and express concern over the impact on company culture. Zuckerberg's personal involvement in the recruitment process has been widely reported. He has been directly reaching out to top AI talent, hosting potential hires, and making offers that have blindsided competitors. All of these compensation packages far exceed Zuckerberg's own base salary, which is a symbolic $1, and Zuckerberg does not receive bonus compensation or stock awards. His perks include a pre-tax allowance for personal security, which came to $14 million in 2024, personal use of private aircraft, which came to roughly $2.6 million in 2024, and his massive horde of Facebook stock, which puts him at number two on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with a net worth of $256 billion. As of 2024, Zuckerberg stood to make $700 million per year from Meta dividend payments alone.

Apple loses AI whiz to Meta with an offer that will make your eyes water

It was just last month that OpenAI boss Sam Altman claimed that Meta had been trying to poach his top AI engineers by offering hiring bonuses of as much as $100 million. There was renewed interest in the matter earlier this week when it emerged that Ruoming Pang, an esteemed AI engineer who oversaw Apple's AI models, had jumped ship to Meta. Recommended Videos On Wednesday, a Bloomberg report, citing sources with knowledge of the matter, claimed that Meta had offered Pang a package worth more than $200 million to join the company's "superintelligence" team, a unit set up by Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg with the lofty task of developing a next-level AI capable of surpassing human intelligence. The colossal sum, which will reportedly be paid "over a several-year period," highlights the lengths to which Meta is prepared to go to help it compete with the likes of Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI in the development of cutting-edge AI tools. Bloomberg's report said that "from a pure numbers standpoint, [Meta's] superintelligence group has some of the highest compensation of any corporate job, including CEO roles at the world's major banks." But it noted that "much of the money is tied up in performance targets and unlocked during years of loyalty, meaning it might not all be received if employees leave early or if the stock doesn't perform well." In a podcast interview last month, Altman said, "[Meta] started making these giant offers to a lot of people on our team. You know, like $100 million signing bonuses, more than that (in) compensation per year." However, a few days later, Lucas Beyer, one of three senior researchers who recently departed Altman's OpenAI for Meta, dismissed claims that the trio was offered a $100 million hiring bonus. "Hey all, couple quick notes: 1) yes, we will be joining Meta. 2) no, we did not get 100M sign-on, that's fake news," Beyer wrote in a post on social media, adding: "Excited about what's ahead though, will share more in due time!" Either way, there are huge amounts of cash sloshing around in the fast-growing AI sector, with Meta, for one, seemingly unafraid to spend huge sums to entice top talent to its AI team. But will the massive outlays deliver the expected returns? We'll have to wait and see on that one.

Apple's Top AI Exec Leaves For Meta Amid Aggressive Hiring Trend - Decrypt

Meta continues to aggressively recruit top AI talent, fueling concerns about sustainability and widening the talent gap with competitors. Apple's head of foundation models, Ruoming Pang, has reportedly left the company to join Meta's Superintelligence Labs, adding to a growing list of high-profile names allegedly poached to bolster Meta's AI ambitions. While Meta formally announced the creation of its Superintelligence Labs in an internal memo last week, Pang's name was not included on the list. His exit from Apple was first reported by Bloomberg on Monday, citing sources familiar with the matter. The departure deals a significant blow to Apple's AI ambitions. Pang managed a team of approximately 100 engineers developing the core language models that power Apple Intelligence features, including on-device summarization, Genmoji, and Priority Notifications. Pang's exit follows that of Tom Gunter, his top deputy, who left the previous month. Pang's move comes less than a month after Meta acquired a 49% stake in Scale AI for $14.3 billion, bringing the latter's CEO onto its team to lead the Superintelligence Lab. That move upped Scale AI's valuation to $29 billion and is regarded as Meta's second-largest single investment after its $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp in 2014. Meta has faced criticism for inflating market rates through unusually large signing offers to secure top researchers following reports that emerged as early as April last year on its rapid hiring spree of talent from firms like OpenAI and Google. While the Facebook parent continues to consolidate top AI talent, Apple appears to be losing ground. Pang's departure comes just weeks after Apple announced its long‑awaited generative features during its developer conference this year, many of which relied on partnerships with OpenAI. Internally, multiple Apple teams have reportedly voiced concerns about a lack of clear strategic direction and the company's growing dependence on integrations rather than in-house AI breakthroughs. "Meta's hiring strategy is a textbook reverse acqui-hire -- surgically extracting its competitors' core intellectual capital, their secret sauce, to cement its future in the AI race," Jeth Ang, chief operating officer at a16z-backed modular on-chain platform Sovrun, told Decrypt. While Meta's approach may score headlines, it also raises deeper questions about long-term sustainability. "The real question is whether this aggressive, over-indexing on superstar talent will ultimately cultivate the stable, innovative culture needed to win the marathon to AGI," Ang said, adding that this could spell "a high-risk pivot that will be difficult to sustain." Losing Pang also feeds into a broader perception problem Apple has yet to shake, Ang argues. In terms of generative AI at Apple, there's a "widespread perception" that Apple appears to be "playing from behind," Ang explained. "Even Siri is seemingly looking like a big fumble," he said. Apple's AI development has seemingly "created a vacuum that the market has filled with skepticism," Ang argued. "While the departure of a single executive doesn't cripple a program of Apple's scale, it certainly doesn't build confidence. For a company that has historically defined technology waves, losing top-tier AI talent to a direct competitor reinforces a narrative that they are struggling to change," Ang said.

Apple loses AI models lead to Meta's hiring blitz

Apple has become the latest competitor to lose out in Meta's multi-million AI hiring spree as AI Models exec jumps ship. Apple's AI woes continue as Ruoming Pang, its top executive in charge of artificial intelligence (AI) models is leaving for Meta's Superintelligence Lab (MSL), as Mark Zuckerberg continues to spend millions on poaching AI leaders from its competitors. It will be the first big AI name to quit Apple for Meta and is a big blow for the iPhone-maker. Apple, like Meta, is widely seen to have fallen well behind its big tech competitors when it comes to AI, and has been rushing to fix this, and losing out to Meta on Pang is quite the setback. Apple poached Pang from Google-parent company Alphabet back in 2021. "Apple's recent AI enhancements have been minimal, and the more sought-after features, like the Siri revamp, are being pushed out to 2026," Forrester VP and principal analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee said in May. "Apple's strong brand equity has absorbed much of this damage without customer defection, but this equity is being steadily eroded as Apple fails to make good on its AI promises." As Meta seeks to compete with the likes of Google and OpenAI, it has been on a recruitment spree for AI leaders for its new Meta Superintelligence Labs in recent months. Just last week Zuckerberg added Daniel Gross to his MSL 'super team'. Gross was CEO and co-founder of Safe Superintelligence (SSI) with Ilya Sutskever, the latter a former chief scientist at OpenAI. CNBC had reported that Meta initially tried to acquire the company but, having been rebuffed, it now planned to pursue its CEO Gross. OpenAI's Sam Altman recently said in an Uncapped podcast interview with his brother Jack Altman, that Meta had been targetting his employees with signing bonuses that went as high as $100m. Bloomberg is citing sources that say Pang will earn multiple millions per year at Meta. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Apple's Foundational Models Lead Joins Meta: Report | AIM

Ruoming Pang, a 'distinguished engineer' and the manager in charge of Apple's foundational models team, has joined Meta, Bloomberg reported on July 7. The report added that Meta offered a package worth tens of millions of dollars per year to him. As per Pang's LinkedIn profile, he began his role as a 'distinguished software engineer' at Apple in 2021, after completing his 15-year tenure at Google. At Google, he worked on Google Brain's speech recognition research and the development of leading deep learning frameworks used by TPUs, the company's in-house hardware. In addition to Pang, Bloomberg also reported that the company hired Yuanzhi Li, a researcher from OpenAI, and Anton Bakhtin from Anthropic on the same day. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has gone on a hiring spree, luring top talent from competitors in an attempt to build a team to work on 'superintelligence'. Meta has reportedly offered signing bonuses reaching up to $100 million. One of Apple's other senior executives, Tom Gunter, has also left the company, as reported by Bloomberg last week. Gunter worked at the company for eight years, and the report added that his colleagues see him as "difficult to replace, given his unique skillset". Furthermore, Apple was also reported to have 'nearly lost' the team behind MLX, an open-source machine learning framework designed for Apple's in-house silicon hardware. However, they made counteroffers after the engineers "threatened" to leave, and eventually retained them. Apple has been exploring the use of third-party AI models for the latest and upgraded versions of Siri, its virtual assistant on consumer devices, amid these developments. According to the report, members have indicated internally that they're unhappy with Apple's exploration of third-party options, which is creating a perception that they're responsible for the company's AI shortcomings. These employees also said that they could leave for 'multimillion-dollar packages' being offered by companies like Meta and OpenAI.

Meta recruits Apple's top AI engineer in multi-million dollar deal, enhancing AI supremacy

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. TweakTown may also earn commissions from other affiliate partners at no extra cost to you. Meta has just poached Apple's best AI engineer, another dagger into the heart of Apple's efforts into AI, of which it has been failing since its introduction with Apple Intelligence. In a new report from Bloomberg, we're hearing that Ruoming Pang, a distinguished engineer, and manager in charge of Apple's foundation models team, is leaving the company and joining Meta's new superintelligence group, "according to people with knowledge of the matter". Meta offered Pang a deal he couldn't refuse: a huge package worth tens of millions of dollars per year, as Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has been on an AI hiring spree, pulling in major AI leaders including Scale AI's Alexandr Wang, startup founder Daniel Gross, and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman "with high compensation", adds Bloomberg. Meta also hired Yuanzhi Li, a researcher from OpenAI, as well as Anton Bakhtin, who worked on Claude over at Anthropic PBC, once again, "according to other people with knowledge of the matter". Last month, Meta also hired a bunch of OpenAI researchers... leaving an AI black hole for Apple at a time when it needs more than just a win. Zuckerberg has been making AI a top priority for Meta, where it isn't just entering the AI race, but rather, keeping up with AI competitors like OpenAI and Google. Zuckerberg has personally been heavily involved in recruiting for Meta's AI division, hosting potential new AI hires at his homes in Silicon Valley and Lake Tahoe, often reaching out personally to potential recruits. In June 2025, Zuckerberg completely restructured Meta's AI teams to better focus on "superintelligence", which is AI technology that can complete tasks at the same quality, or better than humans. Meta plans to splash tens of billions of dollars on AI-related efforts this year alone, with most of those funds going towards infrastructure like data center and AI chips. When he was at Apple, Pang was in control of running a team with around 100 people responsible for Apple's large language models (LLMs) and other AI features on its iDevices. In June 2025, Apple announced those LLMs would be opened up to third-party developers for the first time, allowing for a new family of apps for its iPhones and iPads. Bloomberg reports that internally, the foundation models team had come under scrutiny from new leadership, which is looking at the use of third-party models, including ones from either OpenAI or Anthropic, to power its new version of Siri. These internal discussions have soured some of the morale on the foundation models team in recent weeks. Apple has been exploring a move to using third-party AI solutions to power the AI inside of the new Siri, but working on a new version of Siri at the same time, which is based on the models that Pang's group was working on. Those models also power Apple Intelligence features that run on Apple devices, including email and web article summaries, Genmoji, and Priority Notifications. This new huge departure is the most significant in Apple's AI ranks since the company started working on Apple Intelligence a few years ago, and underscores the increased competition for talent coming into the space. Meta has been offering the world's best AI engineers millions of dollars per year, significantly more than what Apple is paying its engineers for similar work on AI.

Apple's AI head jumps ship to Meta

Ruoming Pang, Apple's head of AI models, is reportedly departing the company to join Meta, according to a Monday report by Bloomberg. This recruitment marks the latest addition of a high-ranking artificial intelligence executive to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's new AI superintelligence unit. Pang previously led Apple's internal team responsible for training the AI foundation models. These models form the basis for Apple Intelligence and various other on-device AI functionalities within Apple products. While at Apple, the company's AI models have not achieved the same level of capability as offerings from OpenAI, Anthropic, or even Meta. Apple has even considered integrating third-party AI models to enhance its upcoming AI-enabled Siri upgrade. Sources cited by Bloomberg indicate that Pang's departure might signal further exits from Apple's AI unit. Despite the challenges, Pang is expected to contribute expertise in designing small, on-device AI models to Meta. His arrival follows Meta's recent recruitment of talent from other prominent AI organizations, including leaders from Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Safe Superintelligence.

Meta paid an insane $200 million signing bonus to secure Apple's head of foundation AI models

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. TweakTown may also earn commissions from other affiliate partners at no extra cost to you. Meta wants to be one of the major leaders in AI and is spending big to get there, recently acquiring Apple's head of foundation AI models and paying him a massive $200 million signing bonus. Apple's now former AI models executive, Ruoming Pang, left Apple for Meta with Bloomberg reporting the social media giant paid Pang a wallet-busting $200 million signing bonus. The $200M compensation package from Meta is for Pang to work in its new superintelligence labs, with a base salary, signing bonus, and Meta shares. The stocks issued to Pang are the biggest part of his package, but we don't have a percentage breakdown to see where that $200 million went. Meta's huge $200 million deal to secure Apple's former AI boss is expected to compensate for his potential lost income, including the new signing bonus and annual income, which aims to offset any lost opportunities if he resigns from Meta and misses out on important stock bonuses Apple CEO Tim Cook has an annual salary of $74.6 million, and even the multi-trillion-dollar company couldn't match Meta's eye-watering signing bonus. 9to5Mac reports that Pang won't see the entire $200 million package if he doesn't stay at Meta for a long period of time, and if Meta stock continues to perform well. Zuckerberg has been making AI a top priority for Meta, where it isn't just entering the AI race, but rather, keeping up with AI competitors like OpenAI and Google. Zuckerberg has personally been heavily involved in recruiting for Meta's AI division, hosting potential new AI hires at his homes in Silicon Valley and Lake Tahoe, often reaching out personally to potential recruits

Apple Loses Top AI Models Executive to Meta's Hiring Spree

Apple's top executive in charge of artificial intelligence models is leaving for Meta Platforms, another setback in the iPhone maker's struggling AI efforts. Ruoming Pang, a distinguished engineer and manager in charge of the company's Apple foundation models team, is departing, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Pang, who joined Apple from Alphabet in 2021, is the latest big hire for Meta's new superintelligence group, said the people, who declined to be named discussing unannounced personnel moves. 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 has 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. Meta, later on Monday, confirmed it is hiring Pang. Apple, Pang, OpenAI and Anthropic didn't respond to requests for comment. 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. Zuckerberg restructured the company's AI teams at the end of June to better focus on "superintelligence," or AI technology that can complete tasks as well as or even better than humans. Meta will spend tens of billions of dollars on AI-related efforts this year, the company has announced, with much of that money going toward infrastructure like data centers and chips. 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. In June, Apple announced that those models would be opened up to third-party developers for the first time, allowing for a range of new iPhone and iPad apps. But internally, the foundation models team has come under scrutiny from new leadership, which is exploring the use of third-party models, including from either OpenAI or Anthropic, to power a new version of Siri. Those internal discussions have soured some of the morale on the foundation models team, also known as AFM, in recent weeks. While the company has explored a move to a third-party solution to power the AI in the new Siri, it has simultaneously been working on a new version of Siri based on the models developed by Pang's group. Those models also power Apple Intelligence features that run on Apple devices including email and web article summaries, Genmoji and Priority Notifications. The major departure, the most significant in Apple's AI ranks since the company started working on Apple Intelligence a few years ago, underscores the heightened competition for talent in the emerging space. Meta has been making offers to the world's top engineers worth many millions of dollars per year -- significantly more than what the iPhone maker pays its engineers doing similar work. 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. The foundation models team reports to Daphne Luong, a top deputy to AI senior vice president John Giannandrea. Earlier this year, Giannandrea was sidelined internally and saw Siri, robotics, Core ML and App Intents frameworks and other consumer product-related teams stripped from his command. That came after a poor response to Apple Intelligence and continued delays for new Siri features, including the ability to tap into user data to fulfill commands. With Pang's departure, the AFM team will now be run by Zhifeng Chen. In a change from a structure under Pang where most of the engineers reported to him directly, there will be a new organizational layout that includes multiple managers reporting to Chen, who will then have engineers reporting to them. People close to the team indicate that Chong Wang, Zirui Wang, Chung-Cheng Chiu and Guoli Yin could be possible managers in the new structure. Apple's overall AI strategy is now run primarily by Craig Federighi, Apple's head of software engineering, and Mike Rockwell, who helped create the Apple Vision Pro headset and now leads engineering for Siri. For his part, Giannandrea is in charge of Apple's AI research arm. In June, at its Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple's own AI only got a small showing, appearing in new features for translating calls and text messages. The few other AI features, including analysis of on-device screenshots and improved image generation, came courtesy of partners, including OpenAI and Google. The company also rolled out a new version of Xcode that can handle code completion by tapping into Claude and ChatGPT.

Meta Poaches Top Apple Executive With Compensation Offer Reportedly in the Tens of Millions

Meta has been on a hiring spree lately, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg assembles a superintelligence AI team. A week after announcing its new Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL) team, complete with 11 new hires poached from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, Meta has continued on its hiring spree, this time with a top Apple executive. Meta confirmed to Bloomberg late Monday that Ruoming Pang, an engineer and manager in charge of Apple's AI models, is leaving Apple for Meta. Pang is the latest new hire for MSL, Meta's team in charge of pursuing superintelligence, or AI that surpasses human intelligence. Sources told Bloomberg that Meta offered Pang tens of millions of dollars in annual compensation to incentivize him to make the jump from Apple to Meta. According to his LinkedIn page, Pang previously worked at Google for 15 years, leaving in 2021 to join Apple, where he headed a 100-person team responsible for the AI models that underlie Apple Intelligence. Related: Meta Poaches the CEO of a $32 Billion AI Startup -- After Trying to Buy the Company and Being Told No Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, 41, has lately been on a hiring spree to add more AI talent to Meta's ranks, personally assembling the MSL team. Zuckerberg has reportedly been reaching out directly to leading AI researchers and engineers and inviting them to meet with him at his homes in Palo Alto and Lake Tahoe to talk about offers to join Meta. Zuckerberg aims to make Meta the first company to achieve superintelligence, beating competitors like OpenAI and Google. The accomplishment would allow Meta to bring advanced AI to products like its chatbot and smart glasses. Zuckerberg said in late May that Meta AI has more than one billion monthly active users across Meta's family of apps, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The goal is to keep growing Meta AI's user base before monetizing it with paid recommendations or a subscription service. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, 40, said last month that Zuckerberg had been offering members of his staff "$100 million signing bonuses" and "more than that" in annual compensation as a reason to join MSL, a claim that Meta executives later refuted. Related: 'The Market Is Hot': Here's How Much a Typical Meta Employee Makes in a Year Meta has successfully poached at least five OpenAI researchers, including Shengjia Zhao, the co-creator of ChatGPT, and Huiwen Chang, the co-creator of ChatGPT's image generation abilities. Meta has also brought over top talent from other AI giants, like Johan Schalkwyk, a software fellow from Google, and Joel Pobar, an engineer from Anthropic. OpenAI's chief research officer, Mark Chen, said in a leaked memo to staff last week that OpenAI would be "recalibrating" compensation in response to the poaching. Meta has also poured billions into a deal aimed at bringing over top AI talent, with a $14.3 billion investment in AI data training startup Scale AI last month. One term of the deal was that Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang join Meta as its Chief AI Officer and MSL lead. Other unnamed Scale AI employees also joined Meta.Meta employed

Meta Poaches Apple AI Executive, Reports Say

Apple (AAPL) has reportedly lost its top executive in charge of artificial models to Meta Platforms (META), as the Facebook parent continues to build up its new "Superintelligence" AI division. According to Bloomberg, citing people with knowledge of the matter, Ruoming Pang, "a distinguished engineer and manager in charge of the company's Apple foundation models team," is leaving the iPhone maker to join Meta and has been poached with an offer "worth tens of millions of dollars per year." Pang is the latest addition to Meta's AI team, with other hires offered large packages including Scale AI's Alexandr Wang, startup founder Daniel Gross, and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, the report said. Last month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that Meta was offering $100 million signing bonuses to leave the ChatGPT maker. The Wall Street Journal also confirmed the poaching of Pang. Meta and Apple didn't return Investopedia requests for comment. Zuckerberg has set up the team, aimed at beating the company's tech rivals in achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), reportedly as he grew frustrated with Meta's progress in the technology. The departure of Pang is the latest blow to Apple, whose shares have slumped this year amid investor concerns that the tech giant is falling behind its big rivals on the AI development front. Meta shares, which entered Tuesday up 22% this year, are unchanged in premarket trading. Apple shares are also unchanged in premarket trading and have lost 16% of their value this year.

Meta Is Reportedly Paying an Apple Engineer Over $200 Million to Join Its Superintelligence Effort

Meta has poached other researchers from leading AI companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic. Meta poached former Apple manager Ruoming Pang with a compensation package in the hundreds of millions of dollars, marking a new compensation high in the AI talent wars. Meta confirmed on Monday that it hired Pang to join its superintelligence team, which is focused on developing AI that surpasses human capabilities. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Meta offered the former Apple distinguished engineer a pay package of more than $200 million across several years. Related: 'The Market Is Hot': Here's How Much a Typical Meta Employee Makes in a Year Pang's compensation package includes a base salary, signing bonus, and Meta shares, with stock awards comprising the bulk of the pay. Most of the compensation is tied to stock performance targets and years of loyalty, so Pang may not receive the full amount if Meta stock doesn't perform well or if he decides to leave the company quickly. Bloomberg noted that Apple decided not to match Meta's offer because it substantially surpasses the pay typically offered to top Apple executives. Apple CEO Tim Cook, for example, made $74.6 million last year, including a base salary of $3 million, $58.1 million in stock awards, $12 million in non-equity incentive compensation, and $1.5 million in other compensation. Other major Meta hires for its superintelligence team are being offered similar pay packages, per Bloomberg. Meta announced last month in a leaked memo that it had hired leading AI researchers from other companies, including ChatGPT co-creator Shengjia Zhao from OpenAI and engineer Joel Pobar from Anthropic, to work on superintelligence. Pang worked at Google for 15 years before leaving in 2021 to join Apple, where he led a 100-person team developing AI models for Apple Intelligence. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, 41, has lately taken a personal interest in adding more AI talent to the company. Zuckerberg has personally reached out to top AI scientists with cold emails and invited them to his homes to discuss offers to join Meta. Meta also made a a $14.3 billion investment in AI data training startup Scale AI last month, and in the process brought over Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang to become Meta's Chief AI Officer. Zuckerberg's goal is to make Meta the first company to achieve superintelligence, ahead of rivals like OpenAI and Google, and embed the advanced AI in Meta's products, like its bestselling smart glasses. Related: Meta Invests Billions in World's Largest Eyewear Company After Ray-Ban Smart Glasses Success OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, 40, said last month that Meta had offered OpenAI researchers "$100 million signing bonuses" and even more in annual compensation, a claim that Meta executives later refuted. OpenAI's Chief Research Officer, Mark Chen, stated last week in a leaked Slack message to staff that OpenAI would "recalibrate" compensation in response to the poaching.

Meta Platforms Enticed Apple AI Executive With $200M Pay Package, Report Says

According to Bloomberg, citing people with knowledge of the matter, "Apple didn't try to match the offer, as it far exceeds pay at the company for leaders other than Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook." The report said that the pay package offered to Pang is in line with others offered by the Instagram parent to major hires for the team, which is aiming to build artificial general intelligence (AGI). But most of these packages are tied to performance and years in service, so they won't be fully received if the employee leaves early or the company's stock underperforms. Meta and Apple didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Meta shares are little changed in early trading Thursday but are up by almost a quarter this year. Shares in Apple, which has struggled to catch up on the AI front, are also steady Thursday, but have lost more than 15% of their value this year.

Apple AI head Ruoming Pang joins Meta as Zuckerberg boosts superintelligence team

Apple's AI lead, Ruoming Pang, has departed for Meta to join their 'Superintelligence' team for a significantly higher salary. This loss comes as Apple's internal AI team faces challenges, including debates over using third-party AI and engineer departures. Meta, under Zuckerberg, is aggressively recruiting AI talent and investing heavily in the field, signaling a major shift in the AI landscape. Ruoming Pang, Apple's top executive in charge of AI foundation models, is leaving Apple to join Meta. Pang joined Apple in 2021 from Alphabet Inc. and led the team behind Apple's foundation models that power Apple Intelligence and AI features, as stated by the reports. He's now moving to Meta's new "Superintelligence" team, where he'll earn tens of millions of dollars per year, according to Bloomberg's sources. This move is a big loss for Apple, whose internal AI team, called AFM - Apple Foundation Models, has been under pressure lately, according to the reports. At Meta, Pang will be part of Mark Zuckerberg's top AI initiative called Meta Superintelligence Labs. Meta recently reorganized its AI teams under this division and hired Alexandr Wang, former CEO of Scale AI, as Chief AI Officer, as per Reuters. ALSO READ: VA halts major staff layoffs: How veterans affairs protects jobs and improves veteran care under Trump administration Meta is going all-in on AI and has invested billions, including a big deal last month that valued Scale AI at $29 billion. Zuckerberg is personally recruiting AI talent, often hosting candidates at his homes in Silicon Valley and Lake Tahoe, Bloomberg reported. Other big names hired by Meta include Daniel Gross (startup founder), Nat Friedman (ex-GitHub CEO), Yuanzhi Li (from OpenAI), and Anton Bakhtin (worked on Claude at Anthropic), according to the report by Bloomberg. Pang's departure adds to Apple's AI leadership challenges. The company is debating using third-party AI models like OpenAI or Anthropic for the next-gen Siri. This shift has hurt morale in Pang's team. Some engineers are planning to leave Apple, and Tom Gunter, Pang's deputy, already left last month as per the reports. The AFM team, with ~100 people, built models for things like Genmoji, Priority Notifications, and summaries of emails/webpages.The team will now be led by Zhifeng Chen, and Apple is changing the structure to add more managers like Chong Wang, Zirui Wang, Chung-Cheng Chiu, and Guoli Yin, as mentioned in the report by Bloomberg. ALSO READ: Amazon Prime day 2025: Best deals, shopping tips, dates, and how to save big this year Apple's AI strategy is now mainly handled by Craig Federighi (Software Chief), Mike Rockwell (Vision Pro engineer, now leading Siri) , and John Giannandrea (leads AI research, but his role has been reduced). Apple's WWDC in June showed only a few AI updates, like AI call translation and text message summaries. Most of the major AI features came from partners like OpenAI and Google, not Apple's own models. Apple also updated Xcode to support code completion using ChatGPT and Claude, as per the report by Bloomberg. Q1. Why did Ruoming Pang leave Apple for Meta? Ruoming Pang left Apple to join Meta's AI team for a much higher pay and bigger role in advanced AI work. Q2. What is Meta Superintelligence Labs? Meta Superintelligence Labs is Mark Zuckerberg's new AI division focused on building powerful, human-level AI systems.

Ruoming Pang salary: Who is Apple's top AI engineer, set to receive a $200 million paycheque to join Zuckerberg's Meta team?

Meta is offering huge pay packages to attract AI talent. Ruoming Pang from Apple received a deal worth over $200 million. This is for Meta's new superintelligence team. The team includes Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross. Alexandr Wang became chief AI officer. Sam Altman mentioned Meta's high signing bonuses. Mark Zuckerberg has hired researchers from OpenAI and Google. Meta Platforms Inc. has offered exceptionally high compensation packages to recruits for its new "superintelligence" team -- including a deal worth over $200 million for Ruoming Pang, a former distinguished engineer at Apple Inc, according to a Bloomberg report. Pang, who previously led Apple's AI models team, was hired by Meta with a multi-year pay package valued in the hundreds of millions. However, Apple chose not to match the massive paycheque, according to a Bloomberg report. A breakdown of the salary package From a pure numbers standpoint, the superintelligence group has some of the highest compensation of any corporate job, including CEO roles at the world's major banks. Much of the massive compensation being offered by Meta is tied to performance targets and long-term loyalty, meaning employees may not receive the full amount if they leave early or if the company's stock underperforms, said the Bloomberg report. Meta's compensation packages for its Superintelligence Lab (MSL) hires include a base salary, a signing bonus, and a substantial portion in Meta stock, with equity forming the bulk of the deal, according to the Bloomberg report. The initial salary and bonus are often significant cash payouts. In cases where a recruit is forfeiting large equity stakes in a startup to join Meta, the signing bonus is adjusted upwards to offset the loss. The stock component typically comes with strings attached -- Meta includes clauses that tie payouts to specific metrics, such as its stock price increasing by a certain percentage annually. Many new hires are also signing contracts with vesting periods longer than the standard four-year schedule, the sources told Bloomberg. Here's how Meta's new superintelligence team looks like Alexandr Wang Meta hired the former Scale AI CEO to head the new division as chief AI officer, according to a memo reviewed by Reuters. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also hired some Scale AI staff after the company invested $14.3 billion in the data-labeling startup. Nat Friedman The former GitHub CEO will co-lead the unit with Wang and head the company's work on AI products and applied research. Friedman co-founded venture capital firm NFDG, which has backed high-profile startups including Safe Superintelligence, Perplexity and Figma. Daniel Gross The former CEO of AI startup Safe Superintelligence has joined the team to lead the AI products division, sources told Reuters. Gross had co-founded NFDG. Ruoming Pang Pang was the head of Apple's Foundation Models team and responsible for advanced AI features. He joined Meta with a multi-million-dollar compensation package, according to Bloomberg News. Trapit Bansal The AI researcher joined OpenAI in 2022, where he played a key role in developing the "o-series" reasoning models. Bansal has directly worked with OpenAI and Safe Superintelligence co-founder Ilya Sutskever, according to his LinkedIn page. Shuchao Bi Bi joined OpenAI in 2024 after working for over 10 years at YouTube and Google. He co-founded YouTube Shorts and built multi-stage deep learning models to optimize Google Ads performance, according to his LinkedIn page. Huiwen Chang Chang joined OpenAI in 2023 after working as a Research Scientist at Google for more than four years, according to her LinkedIn page. She is a co-creator of GPT-4o, OpenAI's multimodal model, and invented MaskGIT and Muse text-to-image architectures at Google Research. Ji Lin Lin joined OpenAI in 2023, where he contributed to building advanced multimodal reasoning systems and Operator reasoning stack, OpenAI's computer-using agent architecture. Joel Pobar Pobar joined Anthropic in 2023, where he oversaw infrastructure and inference pipelines for large language models. He also worked at Meta for about 11 years. Jack Rae Rae was a pre‑training technical lead for Google DeepMind's Gemini and spearheaded the reasoning development for Gemini 2.5. Hongyu Ren Ren joined OpenAI in 2023, co-creating multiple o‑series and GPT‑4o models. He helped lead post-training efforts for the ChatGPT maker's most advanced reasoning models. Johan Schalkwyk Schalkwyk was a former Google Fellow and oversaw major research and product integrations in speech AI. He has joined Meta Superintelligence Labs as a Voice Lead, according to his LinkedIn page. Pei Sun Sun worked on post-training, coding and reasoning for Gemini at Google DeepMind. He previously created the last two generations of self-driving unit Waymo's perception models. Jiahui Yu Yu joined OpenAI in 2023. Previously, he led the perception team at the AI startup. He co-created o3, o4-mini, GPT-4.1 and GPT-4o models. Shengjia Zhao Zhao worked as a research scientist at OpenAI. He co-created ChatGPT, GPT-4, all mini models, 4.1 and o3.

Meta's shocking $200 million offer to this Apple AI engineer is blowing minds -- meet Ruoming Pang

Meta poaches Apple AI engineer Ruoming Pang with a jaw-dropping $200 million pay package, shaking up the AI job market. Pang, who led Apple's AI models team, joins Meta's new superintelligence team, which is hiring top talent to build AI smarter than humans. Meta is offering massive bonuses, stock rewards, and long-term contracts to lure leaders from Apple, OpenAI, Google, and more. With AI talent becoming more valuable than ever, Meta's bold move reflects how serious tech giants are in winning the AI talent war. This story reveals how far Meta is going to lead the future of artificial intelligence.

Apple loses top AI models executive to Meta's hiring spree

Apple's top executive in charge of artificial intelligence models is leaving for Meta Platforms, another setback in the iPhone maker's struggling AI efforts. Ruoming Pang, a distinguished engineer and manager in charge of the company's Apple foundation models team, is departing, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Pang, who joined Apple from Alphabet in 2021, is the latest big hire for Meta's new superintelligence team, said the people, who declined to be named discussing unannounced personnel moves. 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.

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Lures Away Apple AI Chief Ruoming Pang With Tens-Of-Millions Compensation Package: Report - Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)

Ruoming Pang, the AI model lead at Apple Inc. AAPL, is reportedly leaving to join Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Platforms Inc. META. What Happened: Pang, who was leading Apple's AI model team responsible for training Cupertino's foundational models, is the latest hire to escalate Meta's suprintelligence efforts, reported Bloomberg on Monday, citing people with knowledge of the matter. Meta proposed a compensation package valued at tens of millions of dollars annually to ensure Pang joins the Facebook parent. At Apple, Zhifeng Chen will take over his responsibilities. See Also: Jensen Huang Gave $12.6 Million To Charity, Then Nvidia's Stock Made It Billions On the same day, Meta also brought on board Yuanzhi Li, a researcher from OpenAI, and Anton Bakhtin, formerly of Claude at Anthropic PBC, the report added, citing people with knowledge. Apple and Meta did not immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comments. Subscribe to the Benzinga Tech Trends newsletter to get all the latest tech developments delivered to your inbox. Why It's Important: The latest move by Meta is another in the series of pushes the company is taking to expand its superintelligence unit. Last month, Zuckerberg's company also brought Scale AI's Alexandr Wang, startup founder Daniel Gross and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman on board with lucrative compensation packages. Previously, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that Meta has been approaching several people at ChatGPT-parent, luring them with substantial offers. However, he said that none of the startup's top talent took these offers. Price Action: Meta shares edged up 0.014% in after-hours trading, while Apple shares slipped 0.46% during the same period, according to Benzinga Pro data. Benzinga's Edge Stock Rankings show that META maintains a solid upward trend across the short, medium and long term. Its growth score remains strong, though its value rating is comparatively lower. You can find more detailed performance data here. Photo Courtesy: Skorzewiak on Shutterstock.com Check out more of Benzinga's Consumer Tech coverage by following this link. Read Next: Amazon Loses Top AI Leader In High-Stakes Talent Shuffle METAMeta Platforms Inc$718.45-0.08%Stock Score Locked: Want to See it? Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Reveal Full ScoreEdge RankingsMomentum84.83Growth91.99Quality86.34Value26.09Price TrendShortMediumLongOverviewAAPLApple Inc$208.98-2.14%Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Meta Snatches Apple's Top AI Genius With A Staggering Multi-Million Dollar Deal, Further Crippling Apple Intelligence And Exposing The Cracks In Cupertino's AI Ambitions

Apple did not announce any major Apple Intelligence upgrades at its WWDC event this year and there is a good reason for it. The company is finding it difficult to develop and manage the features it promised last year, including the Personalized Siri feature, which was delayed until next year. It appears that Apple's AI efforts will see a further downward trajectory, as Meta has snatched one of its top AI engineers with a multi-million dollar deal. Apple's key executive has decided to take the deal, according to a new report, and the company would have to do the same if it wishes to make a comeback. Meta poaches Apple's top AI engineer with multi-million dollar deal, leaving Apple Intelligence efforts in turmoil Meta has been shopping for players in the industry with offers so lucrative it is hard to ignore, with developers and engineers getting millions of dollars a year as part of its hiring spree. Bloomberg reports that Ruoming Pang, who manages Apple's foundation models team, is moving from Apple to Meta. He overlooked as much as 100 employees working together on the company's large language models used for Apple Intelligence features like email summaries, Priority Notifications, and Genmoji. The report mentions that Meta lured Pang with a deal worth tens of millions of dollars per year, as part of its hiring spree. The company has also scooped AI experts from the entire industry, including from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Scale AI. Take note that Apple is already working with OpenAI for its ChatGPT integration with Siri. It was also reported that the company is also considering relying on technology from Anthropic and OpenAI for future LLM versions that will be integrated with Siri in contrast to its own models that it has been working on for a while. We have previously reported that the downward trend of Apple's own AI efforts is hurting the morale of its employees and it could be one of the reasons why top AI executives like Pang are leaving for Meta. Furthermore, other AI engineers are also mulling offers from other companies and if they are anything like Meta's multi-million deals, it would be hard to pass. In the smartphone industry, Apple is still playing catch-up with Google and Samsung, as they have offered advanced AI features early and are adding new ones frequently. Apple, on the flip side, is struggling to deliver features which were announced more than a year ago and to be fair, the company would have to follow Meta's route to acquire talent from the industry if it wishes to succeed in the AI race. The company has also restructured its teams, with all AI efforts now being overlooked by Apple's software chief Craig Federighi and Mike Rockwell, who led the Vision Pro development. We will potentially see the by-product of the restructuring in the coming months, or next year at WWDC 2026.

Meta's AI Empire Grows -- Fueled By OpenAI, DeepMind, Apple - Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)

Meta Platforms Inc META is aggressively expanding its AI dominance through its Superintelligence Labs (MSL), launched in June 2025 to pursue artificial general intelligence (AGI). Led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, MSL consolidates Meta's Llama models and FAIR (Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research) research to deliver "personal superintelligence." Fueling this ambition, Meta has poached top talent from OpenAI, Anthropic, Alphabet Inc's GOOGL GOOG Google DeepMind, and Apple Inc AAPL, reshaping the AI landscape in a fierce talent war. Talent Heist: Building An AI Dream Team From OpenAI, Meta recruited seven researchers, including Trapit Bansal and Shuchao Bi, experts in large language models and reinforcement learning. Google DeepMind lost Jack Rae, a machine learning pioneer, and Huiwen Chang, an image generation specialist. Related: Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Lures Away Apple AI Chief Ruoming Pang With Tens-Of-Millions Compensation Package: Report Apple's Ruoming Pang, former head of its Foundation Models team behind Genmoji and Siri upgrades, joined MSL with a reported multimillion-dollar package. These defections bolster MSL's expertise in multimodal AI and reasoning systems. Meta also hired from Anthropic, including Anton Bakhtin, a Claude developer, and inference expert Joel Pobar, enhancing its technical depth. Led by Alexandr Wang, ex-Scale AI CEO, and Nat Friedman, former GitHub CEO, MSL is backed by Meta's $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI for superior data resources. While Meta denied claims of $100 million signing bonuses, competitive compensation has drawn elite talent. Powering AGI: Meta's Strategic Hires MSL aims to integrate advanced AI into Meta's platforms, such as Instagram and Smart Glasses, leveraging its billion-user reach. However, AGI's technical and ethical challenges raise doubts, with critics recalling Meta's metaverse struggles. By luring defectors from OpenAI, DeepMind and Apple, Meta is building a formidable AI empire. The success of MSL hinges on this talent's ability to deliver groundbreaking innovations in a competitive field, positioning Meta as a serious contender in the AGI race. Read Next: Musk Chaos Could Oust Tesla From Mag 7, Making Way For Broadcom Photo: Poetra.RH via Shutterstock METAMeta Platforms Inc$720.620.32%Stock Score Locked: Want to See it? Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Reveal Full ScoreEdge RankingsMomentum82.51Growth92.02Quality86.81Value25.82Price TrendShortMediumLongOverviewAAPLApple Inc$211.000.50%GOOGAlphabet Inc$175.45-1.19%GOOGLAlphabet Inc$174.45-1.32% This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Meta's Secret Of Successfully Hiring Apple's AI Models Executive Was A $200 Million Signing Bonus, An Amount That Exceeds Tim Cook's Compensation For Last Year

The solution to staying ahead of the generative AI space and establishing a team that works diligently towards creating Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is hiring talent from other companies, at least that is what Meta believes. Recently, we reported that the social media giant snatched Apple's head of foundation models, and the secret to getting him to resign from his illustrious position at a trillion-dollar firm was an eye-watering $200 million signing bonus. However, before we take a deep breath to fathom the amount offered, we would like to inform readers that this tactic has been applied by Meta before, but the company did not honor its earlier agreement. Ruoming Pang, Apple's former AI models executive, has jumped ship to Meta, with Bloomberg reporting that the latter enticed him with a $200 million signing bonus. The compensation package provided by the company to work at its superintelligence labs comprises of a base salary, a signing bonus, and Meta shares. The issued stock is typically the beefiest part of the package, but the report does not provide any percentage breakdown. The signing bonus and annual income are expected to be large figures to offset the lost opportunity for an employee if they resign from Meta soon and lose out on stock bonuses. Given the ludicrous amount, which is said to exceed Tim Cook's $74.6 million figure that Apple's Chief Executive earned in 2024, the California-based giant did not even match the offer. However, here is the catch; 9to5Mac reports that Pang will not see the entire payout unless he stays at Meta for a considerably long period, and if the stock performs well. This is traditional practice at Silicon Valley firms, and Meta has maintained its stance of poaching talent from other companies. For instance, three OpenAI researchers were recruited recently, but Lucas Beyer, one of the newer hires, has stated that he has yet to receive the $100 million signing bonus promised by Meta. In a recent podcast, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said none of his best people have taken up the AI competitor's offer, while also mentioning that luring talent with heaps of cash will not create the best company culture.

Mark Zuckerberg Poaches Sam Altman's Talent With Multimillion-Dollar Offers To Build Meta's AI Team - Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META), ProShares Trust ProShares S&P 500 Dynamic Buffer ETF (BATS:FB)

Meta Platforms Inc. META, under the leadership of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is on a relentless pursuit for artificial intelligence (AI) specialists, with remuneration packages that outstrip those of professional sports stars and Fortune 500 CEOs. What Happened: As per a report, Meta's recruitment drive is focused on assembling an elite AI team for its Superintelligence Labs. The social media giant is allegedly offering premier AI researchers compensation packages that can reach up to $300 million over a four-year period, with first-year earnings surpassing $100 million. This assertive hiring approach is a countermeasure to competition from rivals like OpenAI, Google, and DeepSeek. A notable recruitment is ex-Apple executive Ruoming Pang, who was enticed to join Meta with a compensation package reportedly exceeding $200 million, reports the Fortune. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed Meta's aggressive offers on the "Uncapped" podcast, revealing that Meta has been making "giant offers" to many on their team, including $100 million signing bonuses. Also Read: Meta Exec Dismisses OpenAI's Sam Altman's Claims of $100 Million Signing Bonuses: 'Sam Is Just Being Dishonest Here' These generous offers have revolutionized tech compensation and amplified the global competition for AI dominance. They have also led OpenAI's leadership to reconsider their own compensation strategies and express concern over the impact on company culture. Zuckerberg's personal involvement in the recruitment process has been widely reported. He has been directly reaching out to top AI talent, hosting potential hires, and making offers that have caught competitors off guard. Why It Matters: Meta's aggressive recruitment strategy underscores the increasing importance of AI in shaping the future of tech companies. The escalating competition for AI talent among tech giants like Meta, OpenAI, and Google signifies the high stakes involved in gaining AI supremacy. This trend is not only reshaping tech compensation but also intensifying the global race for AI dominance. As companies reassess their compensation strategies to attract and retain top AI talent, the impact on company culture and the broader tech industry will be significant. Read Next OpenAI's Sam Altman Reaches Out to Elon Musk Amid Ongoing Social Media Spat: 'Let's Be Friends' Image: Shutterstock/El editorial FBProShares Trust ProShares S&P 500 Dynamic Buffer ETF$40.510.08%Stock Score Locked: Edge Members Only Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Unlock RankingsEdge RankingsMomentumN/APrice TrendShortMediumLongOverviewMETAMeta Platforms Inc$716.70-1.45% This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Meta poached Apple's Pang with pay package of over $200 million

Meta has made unusually high compensation offers to new members of its "superintelligence" team -- including a more than $200 million package for a former Apple distinguished engineer. Meta hired Ruoming Pang, who ran Apple's artificial intelligence models team, with a pay package in the hundreds of millions over a several-year period, according to people with knowledge of the matter who declined to be named discussing unannounced compensation details. Apple didn't try to match the offer, as it far exceeds pay at the company for leaders other than Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook. That pay package is in line with other major hires for Meta's new superintelligence team focused on building AI systems that can complete tasks as well as or better than humans, the people said. The team now includes former GitHub chief Nat Friedman and AI startup founder Daniel Gross. Meta tapped Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang as its chief AI officer by taking a 49% stake in his firm worth $14.3 billion.

Apple AI Model Head Reportedly Leaving For Meta | PYMNTS.com

By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions. That's according to a report late Monday (July 7) by Bloomberg News, which notes that this departure is another setback for Apple's AI project. Ruoming Pang, the executive in charge of the company's Apple foundation models team, is leaving the company, sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. Pang had joined Apple from Google in 2021, and is the latest high-profile hire for Meta's new superintelligence group, the sources said. To land Pang, the sources said, Meta offered a package worth tens of millions of dollars per year. It's part of a larger hiring spree by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has recruited AI leaders such as Scale AI's Alexandr Wang, startup founder Daniel Gross and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman. Also Monday, Meta hired Yuanzhi Li, a researcher from OpenAI, and Anton Bakhtin, who worked on Claude at Anthropic, according to additional sources with knowledge of the matter. Last month, it hired a host of other OpenAI researchers. PYMNTS wrote about this trend last week, noting that while companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and Thinking Machines were paying large sums for technical staff, "the compensation is far from the eye-watering sums of up to $100 million from Meta." OpenAI, Anthropic and Thinking Machines are all paying salaries in the range of $200,000 to $690,000, according to a report by Business Insider, citing federal filings needed to hire people who require H-1B visas to work in the U.S. Meta, meanwhile, paid $14.3 billion for a 49% stake in Scale AI, a deal which also saw Wang join the company. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said that Meta is promising signing bonuses of up to $100 million with even bigger yearly compensation packages. But Andrew Bosworth, Meta's chief technology officer, has said Altman was being "dishonest" by suggesting the nine-figure offer is for "every single person." PYMNTS wrote about Apple's AI struggles last month, noting that the company's latest product showcase illustrated a philosophy focused more on "measured integration, meticulous design and a deep commitment to user privacy" than "rapid innovation in generative AI."

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta pays 'tens of millions of dollars' to poach...

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta has reportedly forked over "tens of millions of dollars" to poach one of Apple's top artificial intelligence researchers as the tech giant continued to add to a murderers' row of high-paid talent. Ruoming Pang, who led the team responsible for developing Apple's AI models, will become the latest member to join Meta's new "Superintelligence Lab," Bloomberg reported, citing sources with knowledge of the matter. Meta reportedly lured Pang, who had worked at Apple since 2021, with a compensation package "worth tens of millions of dollars per year," the sources said. The company also recently hired away researchers Yuanzhi Li from OpenAI and Anton Bakhtin from Anthropic. In all, Meta has poached more than a dozen top AI researchers since last week, purportedly offering compensation packages worth $100 million or more to win the AI arms race - meaning the company's total spending on hires could soon surpass $1 billion, if it hasn't already. At least nine of the hires jumped ship from Sam Altman's OpenAI, with the others coming from Google DeepMind and Amazon-backed Anthropic. The new hires will be part of the the newly formed Meta Superintelligence Labs, headed by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. Late last month, Zuckerberg announced that Wang came aboard after Meta invested nearly $15 billion for a 49% stake in the startup. Other key hires include former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, ex-Safe Superintelligence CEO Daniel Gross and former OpenAI researcher Trapit Bansal, who played a key role in developing the ChatGPT maker's AI reasoning models. "As the pace of AI progress accelerates, developing superintelligence is coming into sight," Zuckerberg said in an internal message to employees on June 30. The announcement helped push Meta's stock to an all-time high. Meta confirmed the hire but declined further comment. Apple did not immediately respond. Meta's tactics have miffed Altman, who has publicly grumbled about his billionaire rival targeting OpenAI's employees with exorbitant packages. Top Meta executive Andrew Bosworth reportedly pushed back during a recent all-hands meeting, telling employees that Altman was being "dishonest" about the extent of the offers. At the same time, Meta denied a report from the tech news site Wired that it had offered up to $300 million to some AI talent - numbers that, if true, would dwarf the annual pay of some of the world's top tech executives. "Some people have chosen to greatly exaggerate what's happening for their own purposes," Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said at the time. Meanwhile, the loss of Pang was another setback for Apple, which has struggled to integrate new AI features for its iPhones and other hardware. Pang oversaw roughly 100 employees at Apple. During Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference last month, the company confirmed that its long-teased AI overhaul of the Siri voice assistant still needed more work before it could be released to the public.

Zuckerberg's Meta Superintelligence Labs poaches top AI talent in Silicon Valley

(Reuters) -Meta Platforms is racing to secure top artificial intelligence talent for its newly created Superintelligence Labs to better compete with rivals including OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. The Facebook and Instagram parent's aggressive hiring for its unified AI initiative has intensified the talent war in Silicon Valley. It also follows senior staff departures and a poor reception for Meta's latest open-source Llama 4 model, challenges that have allowed Google, OpenAI and China's DeepSeek to seize momentum in the AI race. In June, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Meta had offered his employees bonuses of $100 million to recruit them. Here is a list of the new recruits at Meta: ALEXANDR WANG Meta hired the former Scale AI CEO to head the new division as chief AI officer, according to a memo reviewed by Reuters. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also hired some Scale AI staff after the company invested $14.3 billion in the data-labeling startup. NAT FRIEDMAN The former GitHub CEO will co-lead the unit with Wang and head the company's work on AI products and applied research. Friedman co-founded venture capital firm NFDG, which has backed high-profile startups including Safe Superintelligence, Perplexity and Figma. DANIEL GROSS The former CEO of AI startup Safe Superintelligence has joined the team to lead the AI products division, sources told Reuters. Pang was the head of Apple's Foundation Models team and responsible for advanced AI features, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. He joined Meta with a multi-million-dollar compensation package, according to Bloomberg News. TRAPIT BANSAL The AI researcher joined OpenAI in 2022, where he played a key role in developing the "o-series" reasoning models. Bansal has directly worked with OpenAI and Safe Superintelligence co-founder Ilya Sutskever, according to his LinkedIn page. SHUCHAO BI Bi joined OpenAI in 2024 after working for over 10 years at YouTube and Google. He co-founded YouTube Shorts and built multi-stage deep learning models to optimize Google Ads performance, according to his LinkedIn page. HUIWEN CHANG Chang joined OpenAI in 2023 after working as a Research Scientist at Google for more than four years, according to her LinkedIn page. She is a co-creator of GPT-4o, OpenAI's multimodal model, and invented MaskGIT and Muse text-to-image architectures at Google Research. JI LIN Lin joined OpenAI in 2023, where he contributed to building advanced multimodal reasoning systems and Operator reasoning stack, OpenAI's computer-using agent architecture. JOEL POBAR Pobar joined Anthropic in 2023, where he oversaw infrastructure and inference pipelines for large language models. He also worked at Meta for about 11 years. JACK RAE Rae was a pre-training technical lead for Google DeepMind's Gemini and spearheaded the reasoning development for Gemini 2.5. HONGYU REN Ren joined OpenAI in 2023, co-creating multiple o-series and GPT-4o models. He helped lead post-training efforts for the ChatGPT maker's most advanced reasoning models. JOHAN SCHALKWYK Schalkwyk was a former Google Fellow and oversaw major research and product integrations in speech AI. He has joined Meta Superintelligence Labs as a Voice Lead, according to his LinkedIn page. PEI SUN Sun worked on post-training, coding and reasoning for Gemini at Google DeepMind. He previously created the last two generations of self-driving unit Waymo's perception models. JIAHUI YU Yu joined OpenAI in 2023. Previously, he led the perception team at the AI startup. He co-created o3, o4-mini, GPT-4.1 and GPT-4o models. SHENGJIA ZHAO Zhao worked as a research scientist at OpenAI. He co-created ChatGPT, GPT-4, all mini models, 4.1 and o3. (Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese, Jaspreet Singh and Kritika Lamba in Bengaluru; Editing by Shreya Biswas)

Zuckerberg's Meta Superintelligence Labs poaches top AI talent in Silicon Valley - VnExpress International

Meta Platforms is racing to secure top artificial intelligence talent for its newly created Superintelligence Labs to better compete with rivals including OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. The Facebook and Instagram parent's aggressive hiring for its unified AI initiative has intensified the talent war in Silicon Valley. It also follows senior staff departures and a poor reception for Meta's latest open-source Llama 4 model, challenges that have allowed Google, OpenAI and China's DeepSeek to seize momentum in the AI race. In June, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Meta had offered his employees bonuses of $100 million to recruit them. Meta hired the former Scale AI CEO to head the new division as chief AI officer, according to a memo reviewed by Reuters. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also hired some Scale AI staff after the company invested $14.3 billion in the data-labeling startup. Nat Friedman The former GitHub CEO will co-lead the unit with Wang and head the company's work on AI products and applied research. Friedman co-founded venture capital firm NFDG, which has backed high-profile startups including Safe Superintelligence, Perplexity and Figma. Daniel Gross The former CEO of AI startup Safe Superintelligence has joined the team to lead the AI products division, sources told Reuters. Gross had co-founded NFDG. Ruoming Pang Pang was the head of Apple's Foundation Models team and responsible for advanced AI features, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. He joined Meta with a multi-million-dollar compensation package, according to Bloomberg News. Trapit Bansal The AI researcher joined OpenAI in 2022, where he played a key role in developing the "o-series" reasoning models. Bansal has directly worked with OpenAI and Safe Superintelligence co-founder Ilya Sutskever, according to his LinkedIn page. Shuchao Bi Bi joined OpenAI in 2024 after working for over 10 years at YouTube and Google. He co-founded YouTube Shorts and built multi-stage deep learning models to optimize Google Ads performance, according to his LinkedIn page. Huiwen Chang Chang joined OpenAI in 2023 after working as a Research Scientist at Google for more than four years, according to her LinkedIn page. She is a co-creator of GPT-4o, OpenAI's multimodal model, and invented MaskGIT and Muse text-to-image architectures at Google Research. Ji Lin Lin joined OpenAI in 2023, where he contributed to building advanced multimodal reasoning systems and Operator reasoning stack, OpenAI's computer-using agent architecture. Joel Pobar Pobar joined Anthropic in 2023, where he oversaw infrastructure and inference pipelines for large language models. He also worked at Meta for about 11 years. Jack Rae Rae was a pre‑training technical lead for Google DeepMind's Gemini and spearheaded the reasoning development for Gemini 2.5. Hongyu Ren Ren joined OpenAI in 2023, co-creating multiple o‑series and GPT‑4o models. He helped lead post-training efforts for the ChatGPT maker's most advanced reasoning models. Johan Schalkwyk Schalkwyk was a former Google Fellow and oversaw major research and product integrations in speech AI. He has joined Meta Superintelligence Labs as a Voice Lead, according to his LinkedIn page. Pei Sun Sun worked on post-training, coding and reasoning for Gemini at Google DeepMind. He previously created the last two generations of self-driving unit Waymo's perception models. Jiahui Yu Yu joined OpenAI in 2023. Previously, he led the perception team at the AI startup. He co-created o3, o4-mini, GPT-4.1 and GPT-4o models. Shengjia Zhao Zhao worked as a research scientist at OpenAI. He co-created ChatGPT, GPT-4, all mini models, 4.1 and o3.

Meta hires top Apple engineer for development of new AI systems

Pang will work in the Superintelligence division, where advanced AI systems are being developed. Meta wants to excel in AI and is willing to spend big to achieve that. The latest development is the hiring of , a well-known IT expert from . He had worked for years at the tech company as a senior software engineer, but is now making the switch. That move involves a contract worth more than (€170 million). In addition to Pang, Meta is looking to poach other engineers from rival tech companies. To do so, it uses performance targets and stock bonuses. With the current share price hovering around €624 and a market capitalization of over €1.4 trillion, Meta's equity is of considerable value. Zuckerberg, Meta's founder, is among the richest people in the world, with an estimated net worth of €215 billion. Exit at and starting at Superintelligence had long been a well-known name in the tech world, and Meta had had its eye on him for some time. When the offer was made, refused to match it. , Apple's CEO, was not willing to significantly increase his salary. At Meta, Pang will now join the Superintelligence division. There, he will work with colleagues to develop advanced AI systems. Reportedly, salaries within that Superintelligence group are among the highest in the world, comparable to those of CEOs at major banks. Interesting deal for Pang The deal includes an attractive signing bonus, a solid base salary, and shares in Meta. Part of the salary is also tied to the company's performance targets. The better Meta performs, the more Pang will be paid. In addition, the shares are a huge plus, as employees normally only receive that benefit after four years. (jv)

Meta reportedly snatches Apple's AI head as tech talent war heats up

With Pang's exit, Zhifeng Chen will lead the AFM team under a new management structure. In a major shake-up in the tech industry's AI talent race, Meta has reportedly hired Ruoming Pang, Apple's top executive in charge of its AI foundation models. Pang's exit marks a significant setback for Apple's AI ambitions, especially as the company pushes to keep pace with rivals like OpenAI, Google and Meta. According to Bloomberg, Meta has offered Pang a package worth tens of millions of dollars annually to lure him away. At Apple, Pang led a team of around 100 people focused on developing the company's large language models, which power Apple Intelligence and various AI features. His team also worked on the AI models meant to power the new version of Siri. Pang will be joining several other big names at Meta, including Alexandr Wang from Scale AI, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and OpenAI and Anthropic researchers. His departure may signal the beginning of a wave of exits from the AFM group, as several engineers have reportedly informed colleagues of their plans to leave soon. Also read: Apple fights back against $580 million EU penalty, calls it unlawful: Here's why This high-profile exit, the most notable within Apple's AI team since work began on Apple Intelligence a few years ago, highlights the battle for top talent in the rapidly growing AI sector. Meta has been aggressively hiring leading engineers with offers reportedly worth several million dollars annually, far surpassing the compensation Apple provides for similar roles. Also read: Google Veo 3 is now available in India: Here's how you can use it With Pang's exit, Zhifeng Chen will lead the AFM team under a new management structure, according to the report. Apple's broader AI strategy is now largely overseen by Craig Federighi, the company's software engineering chief, and Mike Rockwell, who helped create the Apple Vision Pro headset and currently heads engineering for Siri.

Meta reportedly offered over $200 million to poach Apple's AI engineer

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed Meta's high-value recruitment efforts but noted most employees remain at OpenAI due to culture and innovation. Meta has been making headlines for a while now for poaching talent by offering unusually high salaries to build its dream AI team. According to Bloomberg, Meta has been offering packages that exceed $200 million as it builds a superintelligence team. Among the candidates is Ruoming Pang, a former distinguished engineer at Apple who oversaw the company's AI models team. According to the report, Pang's compensation totals hundreds of millions of dollars over several years, with a large portion tied to performance metrics and long-term stock vesting. The reports added that Apple has chosen not to counter Meta's offer, which exceeds typical executive-level compensation. The hire adds to a growing list of high-profile names joining Meta's AI efforts, including former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, AI entrepreneur Daniel Gross, and Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang, the latter appointed as Meta's Chief AI Officer through a 49% stake acquisition in his company worth $14.3 billion. It should be noted that Meta has not addressed the compensation structure. According to a report citing sources, the salary structure includes a base salary, significant signing bonuses, and a large stock component. Some also receive signing bonuses, which are intended to offset equity losses when candidates leave their own startups. Stock awards are frequently tied to Meta's market performance, with vesting periods that exceed the standard four years. The details emerged when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently acknowledged Meta's aggressive recruitment tactics, claiming that some of his employees were offered signing bonuses of up to $100 million. He later stated that the majority of employees chose to stay at OpenAI because of its internal culture and innovation. Meanwhile, Meta continues to aggressively hire. The company has hired more than ten OpenAI researchers, as well as talent from Google, Anthropic, and other AI startups. Mark Zuckerberg previously made headlines when Meta attempted to buy Safe Superintelligence, a $32 billion AI startup co-founded by Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI's former chief scientist. Later, it hired the company's CEO, Daniel Gross.