In a major move in the ongoing AI talent war, Meta has hired Ruoming Pang, the executive who led Apple’s AI model efforts, to join its newly formed Superintelligence Labs division. Pang previously oversaw Apple’s Foundation Models (AFM) team, which was instrumental in shaping the company’s next-gen AI systems, including an upgraded Siri.
Now at Meta, he will contribute to the company’s ambitious push toward artificial general intelligence (AGI). The high-profile hiring was first reported by Bloomberg and signals Meta’s growing focus on becoming a leader in advanced AI.
Zuck just poached another Chinese AI star.
Ruoming Pang, who led Apple’s Foundation Models team, is joining Meta’s Superintelligence team.
Wild that Apple has ~100 people working on “Apple Intelligence” like Genmoji.
What’s stopping Apple from poaching AI talent like Zuck? pic.twitter.com/nFgDnkmL5K
— Yuchen Jin (@Yuchenj_UW) July 7, 2025
Pang’s exit is considered a major loss for Apple, which has been lagging behind competitors like OpenAI and Google in the race to develop cutting-edge AI systems. Bloomberg sources also suggest that more engineers from Pang’s team may follow him to Meta, indicating a possible talent exodus.
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This move is part of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s aggressive strategy to build a “superintelligence” team, attracting top-tier talent from across the AI industry. The Superintelligence Labs division is co-led by Alexandr Wang, former CEO of Scale AI, now serving as Meta’s Chief AI Officer. Meta has been luring experts from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic by offering lucrative salaries and access to unmatched computing resources—an appealing combination in today’s AI arms race.
According to WSJ, $META has successfully poached $AAPL‘s top AI expert Ruoming Pang, citing people familiar with the matter.
This matter also get reported by @markgurman earlier at @business.
Wow. AI free agency is FUN to watch. pic.twitter.com/28wEsHiIoU
— Ray Wang (@rwang07) July 8, 2025
Along with Pang, Meta recently hired OpenAI’s Yuanzhi Li and Anthropic’s Anton Bakhtin, both of whom have worked on advanced models like GPT and Claude. These high-profile hires have sparked backlash from rivals. OpenAI’s Mark Chen likened Meta’s tactics to “breaking into our home,” while CEO Sam Altman accused Meta of dangling $100 million signing bonuses. Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, however, downplayed these claims, stating that such packages were rare and reserved for a select few top leaders.
Meta’s Superintelligence Labs now boasts over a dozen high-profile researchers, including former OpenAI contributors Trapit Bansal and Shuchao Bi, and image generation expert Huiwen Chang from Google. Other notable additions include Ji Lin, Joel Pobar, Jack Rae, and more. Meanwhile, Apple has responded to the talent loss by reorganizing its Foundation Models team under new leadership, with Zhifeng Chen stepping in and a distributed management structure involving Chong Wang and Guoli Yin.
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Great Job Priya Singh & the Team @ Mashable India tech Source link for sharing this story.
