Ruoming Pang, a distinguished engineer and head of Apple’s foundation AI models team, is departing the company to join Meta Platforms, lured by a compensation package reportedly worth tens of millions of dollars annually, according to sources familiar with the matter. Pang’s exit may signal further turnover within Apple’s AI-focused AFM group, as several engineers have indicated to colleagues their intentions to leave for Meta or other opportunities in the near future, the sources added.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
To secure Pang, Meta offered a package worth tens of millions of dollars per year, the people said. Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has been on a hiring spree, bringing on major AI leaders including Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang, startup founder Daniel Gross and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman with high compensation.
Meta on Monday also hired Yuanzhi Li, a researcher from OpenAI, and Anton Bakhtin, who worked on Claude at Anthropic PBC, according to other people with knowledge of the matter. Last month, it hired a slew of other OpenAI researchers.
At Meta, Zuckerberg has made AI the company’s top priority as it races to keep pace with rivals like OpenAI and Google. Zuckerberg has been heavily involved in recruiting for the company’s AI division, hosting potential hires at his homes in Silicon Valley and Lake Tahoe, and often reaching out personally to potential recruits.
At Apple, Pang had been running a roughly 100-person team responsible for the company’s large language models, which underpin Apple Intelligence and other AI features on the company’s devices…
Pang’s departure could be the start of a string of exits from the AFM group, with several engineers telling colleagues they are planning to leave in the near future to Meta or elsewhere, the people said. Tom Gunter, a top deputy to Pang, left Apple last month, Bloomberg reported at the time.
MacDailyNews Take: Unfortunately, with Apple’s current “leadership” chasing their tails, now looking outside for AI saviors after missing the biggest paradigm shift since the internet by blindly focusing on a failed EV project and non-selling $3500 AR/VR goggles that should’ve been released as a DevKit, that was a no-brainer job change if there ever was one.
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