A fourth Apple artificial intelligence expert has left the company to join Meta, reports Bloomberg. Bowen Zhang, who was on Apple’s foundation models team, is the latest employee to abandon Apple for Meta.
The leader of Apple’s foundation models group, Ruoming Pang, was one of the first Apple AI researchers to join Meta. Since then, several employees who worked under him have also left for Meta. Meta is aggressively hiring for its Superintelligence Labs, an AI division that’s building advanced AI systems capable of performing at or beyond human-level intelligence.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been offering AI engineers massive compensation packages to lure them from other companies, and Pang reportedly received over $200 million. Pay from Meta reportedly includes a high base salary, a signing bonus, and stock awards, and the money offered to Pang exceeds the compensation of almost all Apple employees except for executives. Presumably, the other AI engineers that left Apple have also received offers that Apple isn’t willing to match.
Read more at MacRumors.com