The competition for AI talent in Silicon Valley is heating up! It is rumored that Meta has poached two core AI engineers from Apple Inc.

Meta (META.US) has hired two top artificial intelligence researchers who previously worked at Apple Inc. (AAPL.US), shortly after poaching its former executive. According to sources familiar with the matter, the social networking giant has hired Mark Lee and Tom Gunter to join its "Super Intelligence Lab" team. These individuals have stated that Lee has already joined Meta after recently leaving Apple Inc., while Gunter will also start working soon. These moves are part of the tech industry's efforts to attract artificial intelligence talent. Meta is particularly active in recruiting. The company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg has prioritized artificial intelligence as the company's top task, investing heavily in hiring employees and building data centers to keep up with competitors like OpenAI and Alphabet Inc. Class C. It was reported that Gunter left Apple Inc. last month. He worked closely with Ruoming Pang, who was the head of Apple Inc.'s large language model team and was recently hired by Meta earlier this month. In order to retain Pang, Meta reportedly offered a high compensation package worth over 200 million dollars for several years. Lee was the first employee recruited by Pang at Apple Inc., while Gunter was a distinguished engineer at Apple Inc. and considered one of the most experienced employees in that team. After leaving Apple Inc., Gunter briefly worked at another artificial intelligence company and has recently resigned. The recent hires reflect ongoing turmoil within Apple Inc.'s Basic Models Team (AFM). This team is responsible for developing the technology that supports generative artificial intelligence. Top artificial intelligence executives at the company have been considering using external models to support Apple Inc.'s Siri voice assistant and other intelligent features, making the future of the team uncertain. The team reports to research lead Daphne Luong, who is the senior deputy to the AI Senior Vice President John Giannandrea. Along with Mike Rockwell and Craig Federighi, the two software executives are currently evaluating strategic changes. The plan is to use OpenAI's ChatGPT or Anthropic PBC's Claude as the basis for Apple Inc.'s intelligent systems starting next year. In order to launch long-promised Siri features, including the ability to use personal data to answer user questions, Apple Inc. is developing versions based on its own devices and third-party technology simultaneously. Before the new voice assistant is launched next spring, the company must decide on the underlying software to use. Meta is taking advantage of this uncertainty to offer lucrative employment conditions. In many cases, the salaries promised by Meta are several times higher than what Apple Inc. pays its AFM engineers. To prevent more employees from leaving, Apple Inc. has begun offering salary increases to some engineers in the team (including about 100 employees) to retain them. However, these salary increases are still far behind Meta's compensation package. For example, Gunter will join a group of other artificial intelligence experts, whose collective long-term compensation exceeds 1 billion dollars. Earlier this week, Zuckerberg posted on social media platforms that Meta will "invest billions of dollars in the computing field to build super intelligence," referring to a concept of advanced artificial intelligence that can perform tasks better than humans. Some of the company's top artificial intelligence talents have been assigned to workspaces near the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, to facilitate more efficient collaboration. He wrote: "I am committed to building the top industry, most concentrated team of talent."