Apple loses AI whiz to Meta with an offer that will make your eyes water

It was just last month that OpenAI boss Sam Altman claimed that Meta had been trying to poach his top AI engineers by offering hiring bonuses of as much as $100 million.

There was renewed interest in the matter earlier this week when it emerged that Ruoming Pang, an esteemed AI engineer who oversaw Apple’s AI models, had jumped ship to Meta.

On Wednesday, a Bloomberg report, citing sources with knowledge of the matter, claimed that Meta had offered Pang a package worth more than $200 million to join the company’s “superintelligence” team, a unit set up by Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg with the lofty task of developing a next-level AI capable of surpassing human intelligence.

The colossal sum, which will reportedly be paid “over a several-year period,” highlights the lengths to which Meta is prepared to go to help it compete with the likes of Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI in the development of cutting-edge AI tools.

Bloomberg’s report said that “from a pure numbers standpoint, [Meta’s] superintelligence group has some of the highest compensation of any corporate job, including CEO roles at the world’s major banks.”

But it noted that “much of the money is tied up in performance targets and unlocked during years of loyalty, meaning it might not all be received if employees leave early or if the stock doesn’t perform well.”

In a podcast interview last month, Altman said, “[Meta] started making these giant offers to a lot of people on our team. You know, like $100 million signing bonuses, more than that (in) compensation per year.”

However, a few days later, Lucas Beyer, one of three senior researchers who recently departed Altman’s OpenAI for Meta, dismissed claims that the trio was offered a $100 million hiring bonus.

“Hey all, couple quick notes: 1) yes, we will be joining Meta. 2) no, we did not get 100M sign-on, that’s fake news,” Beyer wrote in a post on social media, adding: “Excited about what’s ahead though, will share more in due time!”

Either way, there are huge amounts of cash sloshing around in the fast-growing AI sector, with Meta, for one, seemingly unafraid to spend huge sums to entice top talent to its AI team. But will the massive outlays deliver the expected returns? We’ll have to wait and see on that one.