Meta has reportedly attempted to attract one of Apple’s leading artificial intelligence executives, Ruoming Pang, by offering him a staggering sum of over $200 million. Pang, who recently led Apple’s foundation models team, has made the leap to Meta’s newly established Superintelligence Labs. This division is focused on creating advanced AI systems that aim to perform on par with or surpass human intelligence.
At Apple, Pang was responsible for a team of approximately 100 employees dedicated to developing large language models. The work produced by his team supports various Apple Intelligence features, including email summaries, Priority Notifications, and Genmoji. Sources familiar with the situation revealed that Meta’s enticing offer to Pang includes a generous base salary, along with a sizable signing bonus and a significant stock award.
The total payout will be contingent upon achieving certain performance milestones and his continued employment over several years. Interestingly, Apple did not attempt to match Meta’s offer, which surpasses the compensation of most of its employees, with the exception of CEO Tim Cook. Pang’s compensation package is among the highest ever seen in a corporate context, rivaling those typically reserved for CEOs at major global banks.
In a recent podcast, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman noted that Meta has been offering eye-catching signing bonuses exceeding $100 million to secure top talent, indicating a highly competitive landscape for skilled professionals. In the wake of Pang’s departure, Apple has appointed Zhifeng Chen to lead its Foundation Models team and has restructured its management to distribute responsibilities among several senior engineers. Meanwhile, Meta’s Superintelligence Labs is bolstering its ranks with notable figures, including former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and AI startup founder Daniel Gross.
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