We’re living in the era of artificial intelligence, with every business in the tech industry competing fiercely to secure the best talent on the market. To that end, Meta just poached top Apple AI executive Ruoming Pang, who was the head of the iPhone maker’s Foundation Models team. Pang was in charge of pursuing some of the most advanced AI features at Apple, according to Reuters, making this a big loss for the company and a big win for Meta’s Superintelligence Labs.
Meta’s AI hiring spree may have come for Apple executives this time, but it isn’t the only company that Meta has been poaching from. Last month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman accused Meta of trying to lure its employees away with bonuses adding up to $100 million. While Altman claimed that Meta had failed to tempt its employees away, later in the month, reports emerged that some employees had eventually taken the bait. The arrival of AI has disrupted businesses in innumerable ways, and it appears that securing talent is the top priority, no matter the cost.
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Meta Poaches Apple AI Executive to Grow its Superintelligence Labs With Top Talent
Meta’s AI hiring spree has now pulled Apple executive Ruoming Pang into its ranks, with “tens of millions of dollars” spent on drawing him away from the organization he has worked at since 2021. According to Bloomberg’s original report, Pang has been promised over $200 million spread out over multiple years. The high cost to reel such talent in has not caused Meta to hesitate over the decision, with the company pulling out all the stops to build its AI business, which has been unimpressive compared to competitors so far.
Reports indicate that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been extremely frustrated by the halting progress being made at his company regarding AI, leading him to push for more personnel from other successful projects to join his team and spur his ambitions. The Apple executive is far from the only employee Meta has poached to bring into its ranks.
Meta Is Hiring AI Talent with Abandon—Will It Lead to A Successful Collaboration?
Meta has managed to pick up multiple current and former employees from industry leader OpenAI, including names like Shuchao Bi, Huiwen Chang, Trapit Bansal, Ji Lin, Hongyu Ren, and Yuanzhi Li. The Wall Street Journal stated that three of OpenAI’s top AI researchers, Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Ziaohua Zhaim, have also left for Meta.
OpenAI has been one of the biggest businesses in AI, with its ChatGPT tool becoming nearly synonymous with AI use among the public. Many of these workers have been integral to the development of key AI offerings from OpenAI after having worked at other tech giants like Google, and it’s apparent that Meta is hoping to put their expertise to good use at once.
Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and some of his staff have joined Meta after the company made some heavy investments in the AI startup. Wang will lead the Superintelligence team to help Meta reach new heights, but he doesn’t have to work alone. Former CEO of AI startup Safe Superintelligence Daniel Gross has also joined Meta to lead the AI products division. Other AI businesses have also seen employees accept Meta’s offers, with names like Anton Bakhtin and Joel Pobar from Anthropic reportedly joining Meta’s ranks.
With the scale of Meta’s AI hiring spree, it is clear that the company is not short on resources to build up its workforce, so we expect that these new hires will also have other tools and technology at their disposal to help Meta build up its AI offerings.
OpenAI Is Also Scaling Up Its AI Hires
Meta isn’t the only company unabashedly poaching employees for its AI endeavors. A new Wired report revealed that the company has hired four high-ranking engineers away from competitors. David Lau from Tesla, Mike Dalton and Uday Ruddarraju from xAI and X, and Angela Fan from Meta, have now joined the team at OpenAI.
The four new hires are set to begin working at the scaling team in OpenAI, which manages the backend systems and data centers. The infrastructure is what makes the customer-facing AI capabilities run as smoothly as they do, so it will have an important role to play in supporting the AI business.
The company CEO also acknowledged the competition in the market and the temptations for employees to quit, reassuring its workers that it might soon calibrate its compensation packages to give them more incentive to stay on at the organization. As Meta poaches an Apple AI executive and many from OpenAI’s ranks, it appears to be a good time to do just that.
The AI Industry Offers the Most Lucrative Careers in 2025
The AI talent war has made it more than apparent that experts in the AI field are in high demand, and many organizations are willing to pay well to recruit such talent. Not all businesses will be able to compete with the compensation offered by the likes of industry giants like Meta and OpenAI, but there is money to be made for learning your way around the technology. Many organizations in non-tech industries have also begun to scale up their investments in AI, seeking ways to integrate the technology into their services for better results.
From AI digital employees to AI as a replacement for HR, there are novel avenues of integration being explored right now. Those who are just getting started with their careers are well-placed to consider familiarizing themselves with AI tools to better embed themselves in the industry of their choice. Not every AI expert will be compensated at the same scale that we’ve seen here, but it is one industry that is actively hiring instead of firing employees from their workforce.
Is Poaching Employees the Best Answer to Building a Talented Workforce?
When it comes to the HR perspective on the matter, there is some doubt regarding the concept of poaching employees and building a relationship based on who can offer the most amount of money. After all, if you bring in an employee on the basis of providing the most compensation, they are also likely to leave when a competitor can offer them more. It also sets a precedent that employers will have to continue improving on the compensation plan exponentially, the moment another offer comes in.
While the practice is great from employees who will always have the best resources at their disposal, employers need to tread with caution. There has to be more on offer than just a good compensation plan. Employee engagement and benefit systems need to evolve to continue giving employees a reason to stay at the organization long-term. A structured approach to work and a healthy company culture can go a long way in providing employees with the stability and security they seek in their work, not just in the AI division but across industries.
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