Apple’s top executive overseeing its in-house AI models is leaving the company, and heading to Meta.As reported by , Ruoming Pang is bound to Menlo Park, and joining Mark Zuckerberg’s all-star Meta Superintelligence Labs group, announced last week.Apple’s AI setbacks just keep on coming Pang joined Apple from Google in 2021, and had been managing the roughly 100-person team behind the models that power Apple Intelligence features like Genmoji, Priority Notifications, and on-device text summarization.
His exit marks yet another blow to Apple’s efforts to build competitive AI models in-house.Pang is said to have received a multi-million-dollar annual offer from Meta, as part of Mark Zuckerberg’s aggressive push to assemble a dream team of AI talent, and he wasn’t the only hire reportedly confirmed today: notes that Pang’s group had been central to Apple’s plans for a next-gen Siri experience, even as internal debate reportedly mounted over whether to stick with its own models or embrace third-party options like OpenAI’s or Anthropic’s models.Meta’s hiring spree continues In recent months, Meta has brought in big names like Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, OpenAI’s Yuanzhi Li, and Safe Superintelligence CEO Daniel Gross.
Sources tell that Pang’s departure might not be the last: The AFM team will now be led by Zhifeng Chen.Unlike the previous structure, where most engineers reported directly to Pang, the new hierarchy introduces a more distributed management structure, with multiple managers possibly including Chong Wang, Zirui Wang, Chung-Cheng Chiu, and Guoli Yin.AirPods deals on Amazon AirPods Pro 2, USB-C Charging: 36% off at $159.99 AirPods 4 USB-C Charging: 23% off at $99 AirPods 4, USB-C and Wireless Charging: 17% off at $148.99 AirPods Max, USB-C Charging, Midnight: 18% off at $449.99 You’re reading 9to5Mac — experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day.
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