Apple Inc. has lost one of its top artificial intelligence executives to rival Meta Platforms Inc., marking another blow to its efforts in the increasingly competitive AI race.
Ruoming Pang, a distinguished engineer who led Apple’s foundation models team, is leaving the company to join Meta, according to people familiar with the matter. Pang joined Apple in 2021 from Alphabet Inc. and had been overseeing the team responsible for building the large language models (LLMs) that support Apple Intelligence and other AI features across iPhones and iPads.
His move is part of Meta’s ongoing push to recruit top AI talent, especially for its new “superintelligence” group. According to sources, Meta offered Pang a compensation package worth tens of millions of dollars annually. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been personally involved in recruiting top AI leaders, including former Scale AI executive Alexandr Wang, startup founder Daniel Gross, and ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.
In addition to Pang, Meta has recently hired Yuanzhi Li from OpenAI and Anton Bakhtin from Anthropic, along with several other researchers from OpenAI. Meta confirmed Pang’s hiring on Monday, while Apple, Pang, OpenAI, and Anthropic did not comment.
Zuckerberg has declared AI as Meta’s top priority, restructuring teams in June to focus more deeply on superintelligence — AI that can perform tasks as well or better than humans. The company plans to spend tens of billions of dollars this year on AI, including massive investments in chips and data centers.
At Apple, Pang had been leading a 100-person team known as AFM (Apple Foundation Models), which played a central role in developing Apple’s in-house AI capabilities. In June, Apple opened its foundation models to third-party developers for the first time, enabling broader use across apps. However, internal tensions have risen as Apple leadership considers using third-party models like those from OpenAI or Anthropic to power a new Siri experience. This shift has reportedly affected morale within the AFM team.
While Apple continues developing its own version of Siri using Pang’s models, the company is also exploring external solutions. The AFM team’s work also powers features like Genmoji, Priority Notifications, and content summarization in emails and web articles.
Pang’s exit is Apple’s most high-profile AI departure since it began working on Apple Intelligence. It could trigger further resignations from the AFM group, with several engineers reportedly planning to leave for Meta or other opportunities. One of Pang’s top deputies, Tom Gunter, already left last month.
Following Pang’s departure, the AFM team will now report to Zhifeng Chen. The new leadership structure will include multiple managers, such as Chong Wang, Zirui Wang, Chung-Cheng Chiu, and Guoli Yin.
Apple’s broader AI strategy is currently led by Craig Federighi and Mike Rockwell, while John Giannandrea, previously head of Apple’s entire AI division, now focuses on research. Earlier this year, Giannandrea lost oversight of key teams after delays and lukewarm response to Apple’s AI features.
At Apple’s June developer conference, its own AI tools had a modest presence, with many features relying on OpenAI and Google models, including the latest version of Xcode that integrates with ChatGPT and Claude.
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