Apple Drifting Further from AI Dominance… Even Key Executives Poached by Meta

Meta, which is acting as a black hole for AI talent in Silicon Valley, is reported to have recruited an executive from Apple as well. With Apple losing even its core talent amidst falling behind in the AI competition, internal unrest at the company is expected to worsen.

On the 7th (local time), Bloomberg News, citing internal sources, reported that Meta recruited Luoming Pang, the executive who led Apple’s Foundation Model Team, to its Superintelligence Research Lab (MSL). Composed of around 100 developers, Apple’s Foundation Model Team is the main development group responsible for overseeing Apple’s proprietary AI system 'Apple Intelligence' as well as large language models (LLMs) that serve as its backbone. Previously, it was reported that Tom Gunter, who served as the team's deputy leader, also left last month, fueling turmoil within Apple.

Apple has recently been left out of the AI race against other big tech players like Google, Meta, and OpenAI. At its largest annual developer conference, WWDC 2025, last month, the company failed to showcase any significant new AI features, garnering criticism in the market that “Apple is essentially taking an AI gap year.” Currently, Apple is pouring its efforts into integrating AI into its voice assistant, Siri. However, with leaders from the Foundation Model Team, which had been developing the AI model for Siri, leaving the company in succession, Apple has reportedly shifted to utilizing models from third parties such as OpenAI and Anthropic for Siri.

Meanwhile, OpenAI is said to be considering raising compensation for employees to counteract the talent drain to Meta. On this day, The Information, a U.S. IT-specialized media outlet, reported that OpenAI is exploring a more aggressive stock-based compensation strategy. The stock-based compensation costs for OpenAI last year increased more than fivefold from the previous year to $4.4 billion (about ₩6 trillion), accounting for 119% of its estimated revenue ($3.7 billion) in the same period. Although this ratio was expected to decrease to around 45% of this year’s revenue and drop below 10% within ten years, some forecasts now anticipate another rise. The Information pointed out, “If multi-billion-dollar stock-based compensation costs increase further after OpenAI’s scheduled corporate structure reorganization, the equity value of existing investors could be further diluted.”

Silicon Valley = Yongchan Song, Correspondent 0full@hankyung.com