TLDR : Meta hires Ruoming Pang from Apple to boost its superintelligence unit, amidst a competitive AI talent market.
Table of contents
The world of AI is experiencing significant turnover: recognized talents are being sought after with substantial bonuses and astronomical salaries, especially at Meta. This week, the company made a big move by hiring Ruoming Pang, former head of AI models at Apple, to strengthen its superintelligence unit, led by Alexandr Wang, founder of Scale AI, who was himself recruited on June 12th.
To build this new internal lab, Meta has attracted top-tier talents: Daniel Gross (co-founder of SSI), Nat Friedman (former CEO of GitHub), Yuanzhi Li, a researcher from OpenAI, and Anton Bakhtin, who contributed to the development of Claude at Anthropic. Ruoming Pang is now joining the venture.
Pang, a pillar of embedded AI at Apple
Pang joined Apple in 2021 after more than a decade at Google. He led the team responsible for the foundation models powering Apple Intelligence and the embedded features on Apple devices. He distinguished himself in designing compact and efficient models that can operate directly on devices without cloud dependency, a strategic asset for mobility and privacy.
His departure is a significant blow to Apple, whose AI strategy remains marked by caution and a more closed ecosystem compared to its competitors. Although it has already reorganized its AI team, now to be led by Zhifeng Chen, the firm is considering integrating third-party models into its future version of Siri, a tacit acknowledgment of its current limitations.
Meta bets on the clash of talents
The amount mentioned to convince Pang, a global package exceeding $200 million over several years, speaks volumes about Mark Zuckerberg's ambitions driven by this team: to position Meta at the forefront of the race for superintelligence, despite recurring criticisms of the limitations of LLaMA models compared to the standards set by GPT at OpenAI or Claude at Anthropic.
This salary bidding war among giants engaged in this brain race raises a question of sustainability. It is profoundly transforming the scientific job market, while exacerbating inequalities in access to expertise, both among firms and across continents.