Apple Loses Top AI Executive to Meta's Hiring Spree

Apple's top executive in charge of artificial intelligence (AI) models is leaving for Meta Platforms, another setback in the iPhone maker's struggling AI efforts.

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SAN FRANCISCO -

Mr. Pang Ruoming, 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.

Meta later on July 8 confirmed it is hiring Mr. Pang.

Mr. Pang, who joined Apple from Google parent Alphabet in 2021, is the latest big hire for Meta's new superintelligence group.

To secure Mr. Pang, Meta offered a package worth tens of millions of dollars a year, the people said.

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has been on a hiring spree, bringing on major AI leaders including Scale AI's Mr. Alexandr Wang, start-up founder Daniel Gross and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.

Meta on July 7 also hired Mr. Li Yuanzhi, a researcher from OpenAI, and Mr. Anton Bakhtin, who worked on Claude, the AI assistant built by Anthropic, according to other people in the know. In June, Meta hired a slew of other OpenAI researchers.

At Meta, Mr. Zuckerberg has made AI the company's top priority as it races to keep pace with rivals like OpenAI and Google.