Apple keeps a low profile in the AI weapons competition. But now, the main loss of talent is a new question about whether iPhone manufacturers are lagging behind.
According to Bloomberg, Meta hired Ruoming Pang, a senior engineer who led the Apple Foundation’s model team. Pang, a Google veteran and the main architect behind the Big Language Model (LLMS) that powers Apple Intelligence, will now join Meta’s elite AI unit dedicated to building super-intelligent systems.
His exports were a major blow to Apple, especially when the company tried to convince the public and developers to take generating AI seriously. He is responsible for a team of about 100 engineers to build the underlying technology behind Apple Intelligence, the AI suite behind APE Intelligence was recently announced at the company’s WWDC event.
Pang describes his role on his LinkedIn page, leading the team that develops the underlying model of Apple Intelligence. Think of the basic model as the basic engine of AI. These massive, complex models, also known as large language models (LLM), are trained on a large amount of data to adapt to tasks ranging from summarizing emails to generating images. Pang’s team is responsible for all aspects of these models, from training frameworks (AXLEARN) and reasoning optimization (to enable AI to run effectively on the device) to its multimodal capabilities (to get a sense of text and images at the same time).
Just last month, Pang celebrated his team’s work in a LinkedIn post following the Apple Developers Conference. “At WWDC, we have introduced a new generation of LLMS development to enhance Apple Intelligence capabilities,” he wrote. “I am very excited about the progress I have made since last year and would like to take this opportunity to thank our team and our collaborators. It is a real honor to work with you!”
After 15 years at Google, Pang joined Apple in 2021. Now, his departure raises serious questions about Apple’s ability to catch up with top talent in the AI arms race.
Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg and Meta not only participated in the talent war. They are the most aggressive fighters. To build what he calls Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) or “super Intelligence” (a system that can reason and think at the human level), Zuckerberg has been personally proposing to top researchers across the industry, which is ruthless. Meta reportedly offers millions of dollars in compensation packages to attract talent from competitors, especially Openai.
This “hiring frenzy” has led Mehta to form a dream AI pioneer team, including former Github CEO Nat Friedman and Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. Zuckerberg showed that no company is immune to his talent by persuading Pang Pie to leave Apple.
This move is in Apple’s fragile moments. The company has relied on its internal debate whether to engage in deeper partnerships with third parties like Openai for future versions of Siri. This uncertainty has reportedly affected morale within the AI sector and Pang’s exit could trigger a wider emergence of talent.
Losing the core AI model of mind is a serious setback for Apple. For Meta, it’s another high-profile victory for a bold, high-stakes pursuit to dominate the next era of computing.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
