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Meta Poaches Two Apple Researchers Amid Ongoing Talent War

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Meta has hired two additional Apple AI researchers to strengthen its Superintelligence Labs team.

Meta Poaches Two Apple Researchers Amid Ongoing Talent War

Meta Platforms (META) has hired two additional Apple (AAPL) artificial intelligence researchers, Mark Lee and Tom Gunter, to strengthen its Superintelligence Labs team. The news was first reported by Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter. This move follows Meta’s recent recruitment of Ruoming Pang, the former head of Apple’s large language models (LLMs) team, who received a multiyear compensation package reportedly worth over $200 million.

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The competition for top AI talent among big tech companies has intensified, with Meta, OpenAI, Google (GOOGL), and Microsoft (MSFT) offering multimillion-dollar salaries and incentives to attract leading researchers. Simultaneously, some companies are reducing other parts of their workforce to prioritize aggressive investments in AI.

Meta’s Hiring Spree Is Weakening Apple’s AI Push

Currently, Meta is focusing its talent acquisition efforts on Apple, aggressively poaching key AI personnel and potentially weakening Apple’s Foundation Models (AFM) team. Both Lee and Gunter were integral to Apple’s AFM team, which is responsible for the development of large language models (LLMs) supporting Apple Intelligence and key AI features. While Lee has already joined Meta after recently leaving Apple, Gunter, who left Apple last month, is expected to join shortly.

Lee and Gunter previously worked closely with Ruoming Pang at Apple. Pang’s departure is likely to trigger further staff exits as engineers follow their former leader to Meta. Lee was also the first hire of Pang at Apple and a close associate, while Gunter was regarded as one of the senior-most employees at AFM.

Despite investing billions into AI, Apple has lagged behind peers in AI advancements. Apple failed to impress investors and analysts at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) this year, after announcing only minor updates to its AI models and delaying the launch of its updated Siri. Moreover, Apple was said to be in discussions with OpenAI (ChatGPT) and Anthropic (Claude) about using their models to supercharge their AI efforts.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made artificial intelligence the company’s top priority, investing heavily in talented staff, data centers, and offering lucrative compensation packages to build the most specialized AI team in the industry.

META vs. AAPL: Which Is the Better Tech Stock?

We used the TipRanks Stock Comparison Tool to determine which of the two stocks is most favored by analysts. Investors should conduct thorough research before choosing to invest in either stock.

Currently, META stock has earned Wall Street’s Strong Buy consensus rating and holds TipRanks’ Smart Score of ‘Perfect 10,’ implying the stock is most likely to exceed market expectations.

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