Mark Zuckerberg has gone all out there by hiring Ruomin, Meta has gone the extra mile to bring the best AI talent onto its team, making its investment in Scale AI a successful venture.
Meta has gone the extra mile to bring the best AI talent onto its team, making its investment in Scale AI a successful venture.
By onboarding Apple’s strongest player, Ruoming Pang, the man behind Apple’s foundation of AI models to the team, Meta has made it clear that it will leave no stone unturned.
Pang, who had a 100-person team under him working on on-device AI like Siri, is now joining Meta’s new startup: Superintelligence Labs.
And here comes the even juicier bit, it seems, Pang is paid tens of millions every single year.
Some sources go as far as to say that his total compensation could exceed the mind-boggling $200 million figure. Is this a hire, or is this a declaration?
So why this hugely aggressive move from Meta?
Because it is completely in line with Mark Zuckerberg’s full-speed-ahead approach to win the AI race.
The now Alexander Wang-led Superintelligence Labs, previously functioning under Scale AI, is Meta’s gamble to build an advanced AI that can one day outthink a human. And that journey, well, no expense is being spared.
Yet, Pang is not the only high-profile defector: The last few months have seen the Meta fangangs drag the best talents from OpenAI, Anthropic, GitHub, and even Safe Superintelligence.
Rumor has it that Meta has spent upwards of $1 billion in signing bonuses and salaries to tap into this blue-chip talent.
Meanwhile Apple seems to be feeling the heat. Even though they fought hard to get Pang back by offering a counter-deal, it never did come close to the heavy-hitting offer Meta shelled out.
This may also spell trouble for Apple’s internal AI roadmap, taking into consideration that Siri and other Apple AI features are still playing catch-up in the greater arena.
What makes Pang’s exit even more significant is what it spells out about the internal struggles plaguing Apple.
There have been some discussions about whether the focus should be on in-house models rather than engaging into partnerships such as those with OpenAI and Anthropic. This in itself tells you a lot about how much one of Apple’s big AI brains deemed it fit to leave.
Investors, for now, probably still are unconcerned. Wells Fargo still tags Meta’s stock as a “Buy” and Evercore still sees Apple quite strongly with an “Outperform.” On a greater level, this indicates how fierce the war is for AI talent, and Meta apparently won’t even sit and watch.
The simple takeaway: Ruoming Pang’s jump from Apple to Meta is beyond just another technology transfer; this is a power play that may fundamentally interfere with the way AI is positioned today.
