Apple AI Exec Jumps Ship for Meta

Meta’s nearly unprecedented AI hiring spree continues apace, as the social media giant picks up Apple Distinguished Software Engineer, Ruoming Pang. The news comes by way of a report from perennial Apple leaker, Mark Gurman, over at Bloomberg. It has since been confirmed by Meta.

The Facebook owner reportedly made Pang the proverbial offer he couldn’t refuse, at “tens of millions of dollars per year.” The news follows other wildly expensive hires including former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and Scale AI cofounder, Alexandr Wang.

Meta is about as all-in on AI as a company of its size and scope can be. CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the year by highlighting plans to spend as much as $65 billion on AI infrastructure in 2025, as it looks to keep its Llama LLM (large language model) competitive with the likes of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.

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For its part, Apple has also spent billions on Apple Intelligence, a small model platform for iOS and MacOS that continues to come up short against the aforementioned offerings. The company is reportedly looking to ramp up long-in-the-tooth smart assistant, Siri, with third-party technology from the likes of either OpenAI or Anthropic.

Apple has also been on its own AI acquisition spree, including the recent purchase of WhyLabs, a Seattle based startup working to combat hallucinations. The topic of Apple Intelligence was, however, largely glossed over at the company's recent WWDC conference.