Meta Raids Apple’s AI Team With Multimillion-Dollar Offers
Reading time: 2 min
Last Updated: Jul 19, 2025
-
![Kiara Fabbri]()
-
![Sarah Frazier]()
Fact-Checked by Sarah Frazier Content Manager
Meta Platforms Inc. hired Apple’s artificial intelligence researchers Mark Lee and Tom Gunter to work at Superintelligence Labs.
In a rush? Here are the quick facts:
- Meta hired Apple AI researchers Mark Lee and Tom Gunter.
- Both worked under Ruoming Pang, who joined Meta earlier.
- Pang’s offer reportedly exceeded $200 million.
Bloomberg, who first reported this story, notes that the company made this move after Meta paid Ruoming Pang more than $200 million to leave Apple.
Bloomberg’ s sources indicate that Lee has already started working at Meta, while Gunter plans to join the company shortly. The two engineers worked on Apple’s large language models team before joining Meta, and maintained close working relationships with Pang.
Meta has been aggressively recruiting AI talent in an industry-wide race for dominance in the field. CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently posted, “I’m focused on building the most elite and talent-dense team in the industry,” and pledged that Meta would “invest hundreds of billions of dollars into computers to build superintelligence,” as reported by Bloomberg.
These strategic hires highlight Meta’s commitment to advancing its AI development efforts, while Apple’s AI division, Apple Foundation Models (AFM), faces internal challenges. The company plans to use third-party models from OpenAI or Anthropic instead of developing its own technology for the Siri assistant and future Apple Intelligence features.
The leadership team at AFM, comprising Daphne Luong and senior VP John Giannandrea, together with top software executives Mike Rockwell and Craig Federighi, are reassessing their strategy. Bloomberg notes that the remaining 100 engineers at AFM receive pay increases from Apple, but Meta’s offers exceeding $100 million remain out of reach for the company to match.
A Meta spokesperson declined to comment to Bloomberg on the hires, and Apple has yet to respond.
Latest articles 
