Apple’s AI Chief Joins Meta in Historic $200 Million Move

According to Bloomberg, Meta Platforms hired Ruoming Pang, former head of Apple’s Foundation Models team, with a compensation package exceeding $200 million. The multi-year offer includes a base salary, a signing bonus, and Meta shares, with the equity vesting over several years.

Apple declined to match Meta’s proposal, which significantly exceeds compensation for all Apple executives except CEO Tim Cook. Pang, who joined Apple from Alphabet in 2021,  was a distinguished engineer leading Apple’s foundation models group.

Pang led a team of about 100 engineers responsible for developing large language models that power features within Apple Intelligence, including Genmoji creation, email and article summaries, and smart notification filtering. 

Apple reorganized its AI initiatives under senior leadership following internal debates about building in-house models versus partnering with external firms. Pang’s exit leaves the company relying on replacements under Craig Federighi and Mike Rockwell as it seeks to regain AI development momentum.

Meta created the offer to strengthen its new Superintelligence division, which targets artificial general intelligence development. CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed frustration with the company’s previous AI development speed and is directing resources toward the Superintelligence Labs.

The social media giant also recruited other prominent AI figures with similar high-value packages. Meta offered tens of millions per year to attract Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang, startup founder Daniel Gross, and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.

“You know, like, $100 million signing bonuses, more than that [in] compensation per year. I’m really happy that, at least so far, none of our best people have decided to take him up on that,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in June.

Meta launched Superintelligence Labs earlier this year to compete with OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. The unit faced setbacks including senior staff departures and lukewarm reception for its Llama 4 open-source model. Wang and Friedman will co-lead the division.

The recruitment highlights the intense competition for AI talent as tech companies race to develop advanced artificial intelligence capabilities. Meta’s willingness to offer hundreds of millions demonstrates how valuable top AI engineers have become in the current market.