Apple did not announce any major Apple Intelligence upgrades at its WWDC event this year, and there is a good reason for it. The company is finding it difficult to develop and manage the features it promised last year, including the Personalized Siri feature, which was delayed until next year. It appears that Apple's AI efforts will see a further downward trajectory, as Meta has snatched one of its top AI engineers with a multi-million-dollar deal. Apple's key executive has decided to take the deal, according to a new report, and the company would have to do the same if it wishes to make a comeback.
Meta poaches Apple’s top AI engineer with multi-million dollar deal, leaving Apple Intelligence efforts in turmoil
Meta has been shopping for players in the industry with offers so lucrative that it is hard to ignore, with developers and engineers getting millions of dollars a year as part of its hiring spree. Bloomberg reports that Ruoming Pang, who manages Apple's foundation models team, is moving from Apple to Meta. He overlooked as many as 100 employees working together on the company's large language models used for Apple Intelligence features like email summaries, Priority Notifications, and Genmoji.
The report mentions that Meta lured Pang with a deal worth tens of millions of dollars per year, as part of its hiring spree. The company has also scooped up AI experts from the entire industry, including from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Scale AI. Take note that Apple is already working with OpenAI for its ChatGPT integration with Siri. It was also reported that the company is considering relying on technology from Anthropic and OpenAI for future LLM versions that will be integrated with Siri, in contrast to its own models that it has been working on for a while.
We have previously reported that the downward trend of Apple's own AI efforts is hurting the morale of its employees and it could be one of the reasons why top AI executives like Pang are leaving for Meta. Furthermore, other AI engineers are also mulling offers from other companies and if they are anything like Meta's multi-million deals, it would be hard to pass.
In the smartphone industry, Apple is still playing catch-up with Google and Samsung, as they have offered advanced AI features early and are adding new ones frequently. Apple, on the flip side, is struggling to deliver features that were announced more than a year ago, and to be fair, the company would have to follow Meta's route to acquire talent from the industry if it wishes to succeed in the AI race. The company has also restructured its teams, with all AI efforts now being overseen by Apple's software chief Craig Federighi and Mike Rockwell, who led the Vision Pro development. We will potentially see the by-product of the restructuring in the coming months or next year at WWDC 2026.
