Meta Acquires Apple’s Leading AI Expert in Multi-Million Dollar Deal, Weakening Apple’s AI Efforts and Revealing Flaws in Cupertino’s AI Strategy

During this year’s WWDC event, Apple notably refrained from announcing significant advancements in Apple Intelligence. This lack of updates appears to stem from the company’s ongoing struggles to execute on features promised in the previous year, including the much-anticipated Personalized Siri, which has been postponed until next year. Additionally, recent developments suggest a troubling trend for Apple’s AI initiatives, particularly following the departure of a leading AI engineer to Meta, spurred by a lucrative offer.

Meta Lures Away Apple’s Top AI Engineer, Creating Challenges for Apple Intelligence

Meta has been aggressively recruiting talent from the AI sector, offering compensation packages that are hard to overlook. According to Bloomberg, Apple’s Ruoming Pang, who led the foundation models team, is set to transition to Meta. Pang was responsible for managing up to 100 employees working on key large language models utilized in Apple Intelligence, including features such as email summaries and Priority Notifications.

The report indicates that Meta’s enticing offer to Pang reached into the tens of millions annually. This move is part of Meta’s broader strategy to attract top talent from notable AI firms, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Scale AI. Interestingly, Apple has been collaborating with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into Siri and is contemplating further reliance on technology from Anthropic and OpenAI for future language model implementations, which contrasts sharply with its stalled internal model developments.

Employee morale at Apple has reportedly been affected by the diminishing prospects of its AI efforts, contributing to the exodus of top talent like Pang to competitors such as Meta. Moreover, other AI engineers within Apple’s ranks are reportedly entertaining offers from various companies, finding it challenging to decline proposals similar to Meta’s significant deals.

In the increasingly competitive smartphone landscape, Apple finds itself trailing behind rivals like Google and Samsung, both of which have swiftly integrated advanced AI capabilities into their products. Conversely, Apple struggles to roll out features that were announced over a year ago. To enhance its position in the AI domain, the company may need to pursue a talent acquisition strategy similar to that of Meta.

As part of its efforts to address these challenges, Apple has recently reorganized its teams, assigning oversight of all AI projects to Craig Federighi, the software chief, alongside Mike Rockwell, who is responsible for the development of Vision Pro. The outcomes of this restructured approach are expected to become evident in the coming months, potentially debuting at WWDC 2026.

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