Apple Inc. has been dealt a serious setback in its pursuit of dominance in artificial intelligence, as one of its top engineers, Ruoming Pang, has departed to join rival Meta, Bloomberg has reported. Pang, who oversaw Apple’s foundational models division, is said to be the latest in a line of high-level departures to Meta’s newly formed superintelligence unit.
Ruoming Pang’s Exit Undermines Apple’s Core AI Team
Pang’s departure strikes at the heart of Apple’s internal AI programme. Brought over from Alphabet in 2021, he led a team of around one hundred researchers tasked with building the large-scale language models that drive Apple’s AI features. These models form the basis of tools integrated across Apple’s ecosystem, such as summarisation of text, generation of personalised emojis, and intelligent filtering of alerts.
Meta’s AI Power Grab: Lavish Offers and Big Names
People familiar with the transition say that Pang was offered an eye-catching pay package, said to be worth several tens of millions each year. His hiring reflects a broader strategy by Meta’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, who has launched an aggressive campaign to attract top-tier AI talent. Other recent high-profile hires include Alexandr Wang of Scale AI, former GitHub head Nat Friedman, and entrepreneur Daniel Gross, a growing roster that signals Meta’s ambitions in the increasingly crowded race to build advanced artificial intelligence.
Meta’s AI Vision: Billions Invested for Post-Human Intelligence
Meta stated on Monday that it had hired Ruoming Pang. AI companies like Apple, OpenAI and Anthropic are engaged in a competition about the future of machine intelligence, but now they are trapped in a race that is as political as it is technical. The strategy of Mark Zuckerberg has been straightforward: spend big, hire directly, and go fast.
Meta is currently investing tens of billions of dollars in AI infrastructure, including massive data centres, proprietary chips and the people to use them. The Superintelligence lab, which was announced publicly last month, is to create systems that not only mimic human thought, but outperform it. This goal, however abstract it might seem, has already started to restructure the field of AI studies.
Turmoil at Apple: AI Team Faces Low Morale and Leadership Pressure
Pang is leaving Apple at a time when the company is not so sure of its future. In the AI department of the company, and especially in the Advanced Foundation Models team, or AFM, the mood is not good. According to sources, the attention of the top management has been increased and so is the tension of the engineers. Morale is said to have declined, and part of the reason is the fact that Apple may rely on third parties such as OpenAI or Anthropic to run future iterations of Siri. This would marginalize the very models that Pang and his team had worked on over years .
The situation at Apple has been further unsettled by shifts within its upper ranks. John Giannandrea, once in charge of the company’s AI strategy, has seen his authority curtailed. Several parts of the portfolio he once directed, including Siri and the frameworks that support machine learning, have been handed off to other leaders. Siri’s development now falls to Mike Rockwell, better known for his role in building the Vision Pro headset, while the broader direction of Apple’s AI efforts has been placed under Craig Federighi, head of software engineering.
New Leadership in Apple’s AFM Unit
With Pang gone, leadership of the Advanced Foundation Models group passes to Zhifeng Chen. Under the new structure, Chen will manage several team leads including Chong Wang, Zirui Wang, Chung-Cheng Chiu, and Guoli Yin. Engineers will now report upward through these layers, a change that may bring order on paper but does little to resolve the growing unease inside the division.
Pang’s departure has created a void, and in its wake, others may follow. Several staff members are said to be weighing their options, and Meta is widely viewed as a likely destination. The recent exit of Tom Gunter, one of Pang’s closest deputies, has only added to the sense of drift. If more follow, Apple’s AI ambitions, already in a moment of doubt, could face a deeper fracture.
Final Words
The AI ambitions of Apple are beginning to look like a leaking boat in a storm. The firm is in need of every available hand and yet its most valuable crew members are leaving the ship to join the new and shiny one at Meta. The irony is delicious: a company that used to boast about making everything in-house is now in the position where it might end up outsourcing the brains of Siri to the same rivals it is losing talent to. Whereas Meta is spending tens of millions like confetti at a tech conference, Apple appears to be on defense in an offensive game.
The executive shake-up and the malaise that has been reported in the AI department indicate that even the company that prides itself on thinking different is not thinking fast enough. With more engineers looking to jump ship, Apple is confronted with a grim reality. In the AI arms race, talent is king and right now Meta seems to be purchasing all the bullets. The issue is not whether Apple can recover, it is whether it can stop the bleeding before its AI dreams turn into a mere footnote in the history of the tech industry.
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