Meta hires two more Apple AI researchers with $100 million deals

In a significant move to bolster its artificial intelligence capabilities, Meta has successfully recruited two prominent AI researchers from Apple, shortly after securing the services of Ruoming Pang, the former leader of Apple’s large language models team. Pang’s recruitment earlier this year included a staggering multi-year compensation package estimated at over $200 million. The recent additions to Meta's Superintelligence Labs include Mark Lee and Tom Gunter. Lee has already transitioned to Meta after departing Apple, while Gunter is expected to join the team shortly. This division, which is under the leadership of Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI, and Nat Friedman, ex-CEO of GitHub, is a focal point of Meta’s ambitious plans in the AI sector. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, is reportedly taking an active role in the operations of Superintelligence Labs, particularly in light of challenges faced by the company’s Llama 4 models in keeping pace with competitors. The recruitment efforts come amid a growing talent competition in the tech industry, with Meta aggressively hiring from rivals like Apple, Google, and OpenAI. Current turmoil within Apple’s foundation models team, responsible for developing the technology behind its AI features, has reportedly prompted some top executives to consider utilizing external models to enhance Siri and other Apple Intelligence offerings. This shift could potentially jeopardize the future of Apple’s in-house development efforts. To counter Meta's recruitment strategy, Apple has begun increasing salaries for approximately 100 of its top engineers in a bid to retain key talent. Despite these raises, Meta's offers remain substantially more lucrative. For example, Gunter is among those receiving multi-year compensation packages exceeding $100 million. Zuckerberg has expressed his commitment to building a leading team within the AI industry, stating, "For our superintelligence effort, I’m focused on building the most elite and talent-dense team in the industry. We’re also going to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into compute to build superintelligence. We have the capital from our business to do this."