USA: Apple loses key AI engineer-Ruoming Pang moves to Meta

Apple Corporation has lost one of the key specialists in the field of artificial intelligence-Ruoming Pang, the head of the team involved in fundamental models (Apple Foundation Models), is leaving the company to switch to Meta. According to sources familiar with the situation, Meta offered the specialist a compensation package worth tens of millions of dollars a year.

Pang oversaw the development of large language models (LLMs) for implementing intelligent features directly on Apple devices, including future generations of Siri and other Apple Intelligence integrations. Under his management was a team of about 100 engineers and researchers.

This departure was the most significant personnel loss in Apple's AI direction since the official launch of the Apple Intelligence strategy. Pang's departure came amid internal disputes within the corporation over possible collaboration with external AI vendors, including OpenAI and Anthropic, which, according to insiders, seriously affected the motivation and attitude of employees within the AFM team.

Meta, in turn, is actively strengthening its position in the artificial intelligence market and purposefully luring leading specialists from large technology companies. In recent months, the company has significantly increased the pace of hiring engineers from OpenAI, Anthropic and other industry leaders.

Pang's move to Meta could be an important step in the tech race between the two giants, where each of the companies is striving to take a leading position in the era of personalized, embedded AI.