Meta Doubles Down on AI Talent War—Luring Apple’s Top Experts in Aggressive Hiring Push

Meta's latest power play? Raiding Apple's AI brain trust.

The social media giant is aggressively poaching top machine learning talent from Cupertino—fueling the industry's most heated tech arms race since the crypto boom went bust.

Behind the scenes: With AI adoption skyrocketing 300% year-over-year (according to leaked internal memos), Zuckerberg's empire is betting its future on owning the algorithmic battlefield. Even as shareholders question whether this is just another metaverse-sized money pit.

The cynical take: Nothing boosts a stagnating stock price like slapping 'AI' on your earnings report—just ask any crypto founder who rebranded their NFT project as 'Web3'.

Meta increases its workforce with AI experts from Apple 

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has demonstrated a strong commitment to artificial intelligence, motivated by its surging global demand. His dedication is evident in the company’s heavy investments in AI, the recruitment of top AI talent, and a substantial boost in spending on data centers.

With this, the company aims to cement its position as the leader in AI, beating up its rivals such as OpenAI and Google.

Following the tech firm’s hiring move, the company recruited Ruoming Pang, former head of Apple’s Foundation Models team, early in the month. The tech company offered him a significant salary package of $200 million to win Pang, effective for several years. Coincidentally, Pang teamed up with Gunter and Lee at Apple, who have also left the company for Zuckerberg’s company.

In addition, the two were the longest-serving members in Pang’s team. Lee was his first worker at Apple. On the other hand, Gunter was a reputable engineer in the firm. After departing from Apple, Gunter accepted a job offer from another AI company but stepped down from that role following Meta’s offer.

Meta’s recent hires demonstrate an ongoing disorder in the Apple Foundation Models (AFM) team. The team is responsible for creating an effective technology useful in generative AI.

The AFM team is also facing uncertainties due to the company’s AI executives’ decision to initiate external models into their operations as a solution to improve its Siri voice assistant, among other Apple Intelligence features.

AI Senior Vice President John Giannandrea is among the AI executives at Apple. Under the research leader Daphne Luong, the team is weighing some strategic changes with Mike Rockwell and Craig Federighi, software leaders currently overseeing Siri. 

Neither Meta’s spokesperson nor Apple replied to a request for comment.

Meta offers Apple’s employees significant salary packages

Apple is developing parallel versions of its voice assistant using in-house AI models and third-party technologies to deliver long-promised enhancements to Siri, such as leveraging personal data to fulfill user queries. However, before its launch next spring, the company must decide which software backbone will power the revamped assistant.

Meta has seized on Apple’s internal indecision by aggressively recruiting its AI talent with highly lucrative job offers. In many instances, Meta offers several times higher salaries than Apple’s compensation for engineers in its Apple Foundation Models group. 

In response, Apple has begun issuing raises to select members of the roughly 100-person team to retain the talent.

Yet, those counteroffers pale compared to what Meta compared to the table. One high-profile defector, Gunter, is among several AI specialists receiving multiyear compensation packages exceeding $100 million.

Mark Zuckerberg underscored Meta’s ambitions earlier this week, posting on Threads that the company plans to “invest hundreds of billions of dollars into computers to build superintelligence”—a nod to AI that surpasses human capabilities. At Meta’s Menlo Park headquarters, some of its top AI recruits have been strategically seated NEAR Zuckerberg to enable close collaboration on the company’s most critical AI initiatives.

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