Apple’s Top AI Models Chief Jumps to Meta in Multimillion-Dollar Deal

Apple’s artificial-intelligence roadmap just lost a key architect. Ruoming Pang, who ran the company’s foundation models group and oversaw roughly 100 engineers powering “Apple Intelligence” features like Genmoji and Priority Notifications, resigned this week to join Meta Platforms’ nascent Superintelligence Labs. Industry insiders say Meta dangled a compensation bundle in the high eight figures, underscoring how fiercely Big Tech is raiding rivals for top AI talent.

Pang’s defection lands as Apple races to ship on-device generative features while partnering externally for cloud-scale models. Meta, meanwhile, is doubling down on what CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls “superintelligence,” retooling its AI org and scooping up experts from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Scale AI. By installing Pang alongside hires such as Alexandr Wang and Nat Friedman, Meta hopes to accelerate inference efficiency and widen its lead in open-source model releases.

The move also highlights rising retention risks inside Apple: sources say several engineers in the AI/ML division are eyeing exits amid aggressive poaching and a perceived lag in Apple’s model-training infrastructure. If more senior researchers follow Pang, Apple could face delays rolling out promised AI upgrades across iPhone, iPad, and Mac—even as competitors push new chatbots and developer tools into the market at breakneck speed.