New Delhi: Meta has taken a significant step in the AI arms race by recruiting Ruoming Pang, the executive in charge of developing Apple AI models. The former who was central in developing Apple Foundation Models (AFM) and its next-gen Siri strategies has moved to Meta, to its newly established Superintelligence Labs. His move is a huge victory for Meta, which is in a hurry to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), reported by Bloomberg.
The company is said to have given Pang a multi-million-dollar package to switch. Indicators point to the fact that additional Apple employees who used to work with Pang might soon join him, escalating the level of tension within the AI sector. Rivalries have been concerned when Meta is known to aggressively snatch talent out of Apple, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
Meta’s superintelligence dream team takes shape
Superintelligence Labs is now co-headed by Alexandr Wang, a former Scale AI CEO, who joined as Chief AI Officer at Meta. As Scale AI recently received an investment of 1.3 billion dollars from Meta, its CEO Wang clearly shows the magnitude of Meta’s drive to win the AGI competition. The company is investing heavily in this department where the best researchers can use enormous computing power and have high wages.
Pang is not the only recent high-profile hire by Meta, which has also tapped Yuanzhi Li of OpenAI and Anton Bakhtin of Anthropic. These researchers add extensive experience in developing such leading models as GPT and Claude, which enhances the potential of Meta.
Industry rivals push back as Meta ramps up hiring
The recruitment push has become controversial. Mark Chen, OpenAI engineer, compared Meta to a thief who broke into its house and took something in a statement, and CEO Sam Altman accused Meta of offering team members $100 million to join it. But Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth dismissed the allegations, claiming that few leadership hires were presented with such large packages.
It has been reported that in the past months, Meta has recruited over a dozen AI researchers across the industry. These are Trapit Bansal of OpenAI, Shuchao Bi (who has done the voice work of GPT-4o), and Huiwen Chang of Google Research. The team now have such names as Ji Lin, Jack Rae, Joel Pobar, etc.
Apple reshuffles AI team leadership
Apple, in the meantime, is restructuring its AI management after Pang left. The AFM group will now be led by Zhifeng Chen as deputy; Tom Gunter left the company last month. The company is shifting towards distributed management, engaging such major players as Chong Wang and Guoli Yin to carry on with its AI strategy.