The talent war in artificial intelligence is no longer subtle. Meta has now pulled Apple’s top AI executive into its newly formed Superintelligence division. Ruoming Pang, who ran Apple’s foundation models team and oversaw a hundred engineers building the core of Apple Intelligence, has officially exited. Bloomberg confirmed the move on July 7. Meta offered Pang a compensation package reportedly worth tens of millions per year. That’s not a rumor. That’s the number floating inside recruiting circles.
This isn’t an isolated hire. Meta has poached at least 15 senior AI researchers from Google, OpenAI, and Apple in the past month. The list includes Yuanzhi Li from OpenAI, Anton Bakhtin from Anthropic, and multiple engineers who worked on Claude and GPT. Alexandr Wang, former CEO of Scale AI, now leads Meta’s Superintelligence Labs. Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross are also onboard. Zuckerberg is not just building a team. He’s building a strike force.
Pang’s departure is a blow to Apple’s internal AI roadmap. His team built the models behind Genmoji, Priority Notifications, and on-device summarization. Apple had already delayed its Siri upgrade and was considering outsourcing core AI functions to OpenAI or Anthropic. That internal debate fractured morale. Tom Gunter, Pang’s deputy, left last month. Several engineers are reportedly preparing to follow. Apple’s AI group is now under new leadership. Zhifeng Chen takes over with a restructured hierarchy. Craig Federighi and Mike Rockwell are steering the broader strategy.
Meta’s hiring spree is not just about talent. It’s about positioning. Zuckerberg has reorganized Menlo Park to place the AI team near his office. He’s hosting recruits at his homes. He’s personally involved in every major hire. The goal is artificial general intelligence. Not incremental upgrades. Not chatbot fluff. AGI. Machines that outperform humans. Meta is spending billions on infrastructure, chips, and data centers to support this push.
OpenAI’s Sam Altman said Meta was offering $100 million signing bonuses. He claimed none of his best people took the bait. That statement didn’t age well. Meta landed four OpenAI researchers in Zurich alone. The internal memo from OpenAI’s Mark Chen described the situation as “someone broke into our house and stole something.” Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth said the market is hot but not that hot. The numbers say otherwise.
Apple’s AI team is bleeding. OpenAI is scrambling. Google is quiet. Meta is loud. The Superintelligence Labs are now stacked with names that built the backbone of modern AI. Pang’s move signals that Meta is not just competing. It’s absorbing. The social media label is fading. The AGI label is rising.
Sources:
https://cybernews.com/ai-news/meta-artificial-intelligence-poaching-spree-apple
https://aimagazine.com/news/is-the-tech-sector-the-new-frontier-for-team-poaching-cases