Meta hires two key Apple AI researchers after poaching their boss

Business Standard

20 hours ago

The moves are part of a scramble for AI talent across the tech industry. Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has been especially aggressive in its recruiting
Bloomberg
By Mark Gurman and Kurt Wagner
Meta Platforms Inc. hired a pair of key artificial intelligence researchers who worked at Apple Inc., shortly after poaching their former boss from the iPhone maker.
The social networking giant hired Mark Lee and Tom Gunter for its Superintelligence Labs team, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Lee has started at Meta after leaving Apple in recent days, while Gunter will begin work in the near future, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the hires haven't been announced.
The moves are part of a scramble for AI talent across the tech industry. Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has been especially aggressive in its recruiting. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has made artificial intelligence the company's top priority, spending heavily on workers and data centers to try and keep pace with rivals like OpenAI and Google.
Gunter left Apple last month, Bloomberg News reported at the time, and both he and Lee worked closely with Ruoming Pang, the chief of Apple's large language models team who Meta poached earlier this month. To secure Pang, Meta offered a multiyear compensation package worth well over $200 million, Bloomberg reported.
Lee was known as Pang's first hire at Apple, while Gunter, who was a distinguished engineer at Apple, was regarded as one of the group's most senior employees. Gunter started at a different AI company after leaving Apple and departed in recent days.
A Meta spokesperson declined to comment, while Apple didn't respond to a request for comment.
The latest hires reflect the continuing turmoil at the Apple Foundation Models team, or AFM, which develops the technology underpinning generative AI. The company's top AI executives have been considering using outside models to power the Siri voice assistant and other Apple Intelligence features, clouding the team's future.
The group reports to research head Daphne Luong, a top deputy to AI Senior Vice President John Giannandrea. They're evaluating strategy changes alongside Mike Rockwell and Craig Federighi, the software executives now in charge of Siri. The idea would be to rely on OpenAI's ChatGPT or Anthropic PBC's Claude as the foundation for Apple Intelligence beginning next year.
In order to bring long-promised Siri features to market, including the ability to tap into personal data to fulfill queries, Apple is simultaneously developing versions with both its own models and third-party technology. Before the new voice assistant can launch next spring, the company will have to decide on which underlying software to use.
Meta has capitalized on this uncertainty with generous job offers. In many cases, Meta is promising compensation that is several multiples higher than what Apple pays its AFM engineers. In order to prevent more departures, Apple has begun offering some engineers in the group — which includes 100 or so people — raises to stay put.
Still, those increases are a far cry from Meta's offers. Gunter, for instance, is joining a club of several other AI experts who are receiving multiyear packages worth more than $100 million.
Earlier this week, Zuckerberg posted on Threads that Meta would 'invest hundreds of billions of dollars into compute to build superintelligence,' a reference to the concept of an advanced form of AI that can complete tasks better than humans. Some of the company's top AI hires have been assigned desks near Zuckerberg at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, allowing for easier collaboration.
'I'm focused on building the most elite and talent-dense team in the industry,' he posted on Threads.