A fourth Apple synthetic intelligence knowledgeable has left the corporate to affix Meta, experiences Bloomberg. Bowen Zhang, who was on Apple’s basis fashions workforce, is the worldwide worker to desert Apple for Meta.
The chief of Apple’s basis fashions group, Ruoming Pang, was one of many first Apple AI researchers to join Meta. Since then, a number of staff who labored underneath him have additionally left for Meta. Meta is aggressively hiring for its Superintelligence Labs, an AI division that is constructing superior AI programs able to acting at or past human-level intelligence.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been providing AI engineers huge compensation packages to lure them from different corporations, and Pang reportedly obtained over $200 million. Pay from Meta reportedly features a excessive base wage, a signing bonus, and inventory awards, and the cash supplied to Pang exceeds the compensation of just about all Apple staff aside from executives. Presumably, the opposite AI engineers that left Apple have additionally obtained affords that Apple is not keen to match.
Final month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that Meta had been providing signing bonuses as excessive as $100 million. Meta has employed engineers and AI consultants from Apple, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Bloomberg says Apple is “marginally rising” the pay of its basis fashions workforce, however shouldn’t be paying on the stage that Meta is.
With Apple shedding key staff to Meta, it might proceed to wrestle to catch up within the AI race. Rivals like Google and Samsung have rather more superior AI options already, and this 12 months, Apple was compelled to delay promised Apple Intelligence Siri options till 2026.
Apple has been restructuring its AI groups, with AI efforts now overseen by Apple software program chief Craig Federighi and Mike Rockwell, who led Apple Vision Pro growth. Rumors counsel that Apple is contemplating utilizing know-how from Anthropic or OpenAI for future AI options, together with an LLM model of Siri, reasonably than its personal fashions.
Apple’s discussions to depend on third-party AI know-how have reportedly led to falling morale on the inspiration fashions workforce that’s now shedding staff to Meta. A number of engineers are reportedly actively interviewing for jobs at different AI corporations, whereas Apple executives are aiming to reassure workforce members that it stays dedicated to in-house AI growth.