Brain drain: Apple loses fourth AI researcher to Meta Platforms

Apple CEO Tim Cook from the company’s pre-recorded WWDC 2025 keynote video, streamed on June 9, 2025
Apple has seen its fourth AI researcher, Bowen Zhang, depart for Meta Platforms Inc. in a month, with Zhang joining Meta’s superintelligence team. The string of exits has disrupted Apple’s models team, leaving the future of its foundation models group uncertain and prompting other engineers to seek opportunities elsewhere. Apple is now exploring a greater reliance on third-party AI models, as some executives view its in-house models as a barrier to competing with AI industry leaders.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
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Bowen Zhang, a key multimodal AI researcher at Apple, left the company on Friday and is set to join Meta’s recently formed superintelligence team, according to people familiar with the matter. Zhang was part of the Apple foundation models group, or AFM, which built the core technology behind the company’s AI platform.
Meta previously lured away the leader of the team, Ruoming Pang, with a compensation package valued at more than $200 million… Two other researchers from that group — Tom Gunter and Mark Lee — also recently joined Meta. AFM is made up of several dozen engineers and researchers across Cupertino, California, and New York.
In response to the job offers from Meta and others, Apple has been marginally increasing the pay of its AFM staffers, whether or not they’ve threatened to leave, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the moves are private. Still, the pay levels pale in comparison with those of rivals.
Apple shares declined as much as 1.5% to $210.82, reaching a session low in New York trading. The stock was already down 15% this year through Monday’s close.
The departures have thrown Apple’s models team into flux. Pang played a central role in defining the department’s road map and research direction, and multiple people within AFM now say its future is unclear. Additional engineers are actively interviewing for jobs elsewhere, according to the people. Another team member — Floris Weers — left for a startup in recent weeks.

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MacDailyNews Take: Tim Cook’s myopic, dithering C-Suite is shooting out AI researchers like t-shirts from a bleacher-reacher.
But, hey, don’t look there, watch this overproduced canned video: Liquid Ass… uh, Glass!
As we explained, as presciently as usual, many years ago:
Half a decade after Steve Jobs’ death, people are beginning to see the results of the lack of a charismatic, focused leader. You cannot go from Steve Jobs to someone who “doesn’t like people arguing” and not cause a profound culture change. – MacDailyNews, April 10, 2017
If he retired today, Tim Cook’s Apple would be known for coasting along on Steve Jobs’ innovations, rolling up tremendous profits that any halfway competent CEO would have accrued (or more), and devolving into being lazy, sloppy and routinely late. That’s a great legacy, Tim. — MacDailyNews, April 10, 2018

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