Meta Snatches Apple’s Top AI Genius, Exposing Weaknesses in Apple’s AI Ambitions

In a shocking move, Meta has successfully poached one of Apple’s top AI minds, leaving a significant dent in Apple’s AI ambitions. The multi-million-dollar deal for Ruoming Pang, Apple’s former head of foundation models, highlights the growing cracks in Cupertino’s AI strategy.

Pang, who oversaw a team of 100 employees working on key AI features like Personalized Siri, Genmoji, and Priority Notifications, is now joining Meta, a company known for its aggressive hiring of AI talent.

Apple’s AI efforts have been under pressure for some time, and the company didn’t showcase any major Apple Intelligence upgrades during its latest WWDC event. Many of the promises made last year, such as the Personalized Siri feature, have been delayed, and the company appears to be struggling with its AI initiatives. Meta, on the other hand, has been making moves to strengthen its AI team, offering lucrative deals to top developers and engineers from across the industry, including Apple, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Scale AI.

The $10-million-plus deal Meta reportedly offered Pang is just one example of the generous compensation packages the company is offering to AI experts. These multi-million dollar offers have attracted key players from industry giants, further solidifying Meta’s AI position. With Apple’s reliance on third-party solutions like OpenAI for its ChatGPT integration with Siri, the company may be losing ground in the AI race to competitors like Meta, Google, and Samsung, who are already deploying advanced AI features across their products.

Apple has also restructured its AI teams, now overseen by Craig Federighi, the company’s software chief, and Mike Rockwell, who previously led Vision Pro development. This restructuring is expected to yield results in the coming months, possibly by next year’s WWDC 2026. However, for Apple to remain competitive in the fast-evolving AI landscape, it may need to adopt a similar approach to Meta and actively acquire top talent from the industry.