Meta recruits Apple's top AI engineer in multi-million dollar deal, enhancing AI supremacy

Meta has just poached Apple's best AI engineer, another dagger into the heart of Apple's efforts into AI, of which it has been failing since its introduction with Apple Intelligence.

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In a new report from Bloomberg, we're hearing that Ruoming Pang, a distinguished engineer, and manager in charge of Apple's foundation models team, is leaving the company and joining Meta's new superintelligence group, "according to people with knowledge of the matter".

Meta offered Pang a deal he couldn't refuse: a huge package worth tens of millions of dollars per year, as Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has been on an AI hiring spree, pulling in major AI leaders including Scale AI's Alexandr Wang, startup founder Daniel Gross, and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman "with high compensation", adds Bloomberg.

Meta also hired Yuanzhi Li, a researcher from OpenAI, as well as Anton Bakhtin, who worked on Claude over at Anthropic PBC, once again, "according to other people with knowledge of the matter". Last month, Meta also hired a bunch of OpenAI researchers... leaving an AI black hole for Apple at a time when it needs more than just a win.

Zuckerberg has been making AI a top priority for Meta, where it isn't just entering the AI race, but rather, keeping up with AI competitors like OpenAI and Google. Zuckerberg has personally been heavily involved in recruiting for Meta's AI division, hosting potential new AI hires at his homes in Silicon Valley and Lake Tahoe, often reaching out personally to potential recruits.

In June 2025, Zuckerberg completely restructured Meta's AI teams to better focus on "superintelligence", which is AI technology that can complete tasks at the same quality, or better than humans. Meta plans to splash tens of billions of dollars on AI-related efforts this year alone, with most of those funds going towards infrastructure like data center and AI chips.

When he was at Apple, Pang was in control of running a team with around 100 people responsible for Apple's large language models (LLMs) and other AI features on its iDevices. In June 2025, Apple announced those LLMs would be opened up to third-party developers for the first time, allowing for a new family of apps for its iPhones and iPads.

Bloomberg reports that internally, the foundation models team had come under scrutiny from new leadership, which is looking at the use of third-party models, including ones from either OpenAI or Anthropic, to power its new version of Siri. These internal discussions have soured some of the morale on the foundation models team in recent weeks.

Apple has been exploring a move to using third-party AI solutions to power the AI inside of the new Siri, but working on a new version of Siri at the same time, which is based on the models that Pang's group was working on. Those models also power Apple Intelligence features that run on Apple devices, including email and web article summaries, Genmoji, and Priority Notifications.

This new huge departure is the most significant in Apple's AI ranks since the company started working on Apple Intelligence a few years ago, and underscores the increased competition for talent coming into the space. Meta has been offering the world's best AI engineers millions of dollars per year, significantly more than what Apple is paying its engineers for similar work on AI.