Apple loses fourth AI researcher in a month to Meta’s superintelligence team
In response to the job offers from Meta and others, Apple has been marginally increasing the pay of staffers in its foundation models group
Apple has lost its fourth AI researcher in a month to Meta Platforms, marking the latest setback to the iPhone maker’s artificial intelligence efforts.
Bowen Zhang, a key multimodal AI researcher at Apple, left the company on Friday and is set to join Meta’s recently formed superintelligence team, according to people familiar with the matter. Zhang was part of the Apple foundation models group, or AFM, which built the core technology behind the company’s AI platform.
Meta previously lured away the leader of the team, Ruoming Pang, with a compensation package valued at more than US$200 million, Bloomberg News has reported. Two other researchers from that group – Tom Gunter and Mark Lee – also recently joined Meta. AFM is made up of several dozen engineers and researchers across Cupertino, California, and New York.
In response to the job offers from Meta and others, Apple has been marginally increasing the pay of its AFM staffers, whether or not they have threatened to leave, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the moves are private. Still, the pay levels pale in comparison with those of rivals.
Spokespeople for Apple and Meta declined to comment.
The departures have thrown Apple’s models team into flux. Pang played a central role in defining the department’s road map and research direction, and multiple people within AFM now say its future is unclear. Additional engineers are actively interviewing for jobs jobs elsewhere, according to the people. Another team member – Floris Weers – left for a start-up in recent weeks.