July 30, 2025 – According to a report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman today, Apple Inc. has suffered another setback in its AI strategy as Meta has poached four artificial intelligence experts from the iPhone maker within a month.
Insiders revealed that Bowen Zhang, a key researcher in the field of multimodal AI at Apple, left the company on Friday. He is set to join Meta’s newly – established super – intelligence team. Zhang was a member of Apple’s Foundation Models team (AFM) and played a crucial role in developing the core technology behind Apple’s AI platform.
Prior to Zhang’s departure, Meta had already lured away Ruoming Pang, the head of Apple’s AI team. Bloomberg reported that Pang’s compensation package was worth more than $200 million. In addition, two other researchers from the same team, Tom Gunter and Mark Lee, have also recently joined Meta.
In response to recruitment offers from companies like Meta, Apple has offered a modest pay raise to its AFM employees. However, it is clear that Apple’s salary levels still fall short of the offers from its competitors. Both Apple and Meta spokespeople declined to comment on the matter.
