Meta creates a major problem for Apple’s AI plans

The hiring spree of Meta doesn’t seem to end anytime soon, and in the latest edition, it has poached Apple’s AI lead to improve its Artificial Intelligence plans.

Ruoming Pang, a well-known engineer and head of Apple’s foundation model team, has left the company, confirmed sources to Bloomberg, and he is set to join Meta to find a new course in his career.

Pang joined Apple after leaving Alphabet in 2021, and his latest move is taking him to the world’s largest social media group with millions of dollars in the offer letter.

Meta is working on a superintelligence project, a super advanced version of its AI models that could surpass all competitors in the market. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is leading this project and hiring major talents from rivals OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and others.

Some of the major recruitments includes Alexandr Wang, from Scale AI, Founder and Github CEO Nat Friedman, who’s known for his vast experience in AI. Yuanzhi Li, an Open Researcher, and Anton Bakhtin from Claude have also joined Meta’s AI team.

At Apple, Pang had a team of around 100 people researching large language models for Apple Intelligence. Before this departure, Apple announced to open AI models for third-party developers, giving them access to iPhone and iPad apps.

However, there’s a bigger picture of the entire story. Last year, Apple introduced Apple Intelligence with huge promises to reinvent its operating system and bring major generative AI features. At that time, competitors such as Samsung had already introduced generative AI features in their smartphones, while Apple was already running behind.

This move by Meta could also slow down Apple’s plan to advance the Siri voice assistant with generative AI, which is already delayed. The report expects that Pang’s exit could lead to a series of talent losses in the iPhone maker’s camp, making it difficult to get the AI projects going.