Meta steals two more Apple AI executives

Meta has poached two more senior Apple AI engineers, Mark Lee and Tom Gunter – just after bringing on their former Apple boss Ruoming Pang.

Meta has poached two more senior Apple AI engineers, Mark Lee and Tom Gunter, as part of its ongoing hiring spree aimed at strengthening its artificial intelligence division.

According to Bloomberg, Lee has already started at Meta, while Gunter will begin work in the coming weeks.

Both executives were key figures within Apple’s Foundation Models team (AFM), which oversees generative AI technology and underpins initiatives like Apple Intelligence and the Siri voice assistant.

The hires come shortly after Meta secured Ruoming Pang, the former head of Apple’s large language models team, with a reported multiyear compensation package worth over $200 million.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made AI the company’s top strategic focus.

Writing on Threads earlier this week, he said: “I’m focused on building the most elite and talent-dense team in the industry,” while also pledging that Meta will “invest hundreds of billions of dollars into compute to build superintelligence.”

The latest hires highlight ongoing turmoil within Apple’s AI group.

Reports suggest Apple is considering outsourcing parts of its AI infrastructure to third-party models from OpenAI or Anthropic, raising questions over the future of its in-house team.

To counter Meta’s recruitment drive, Apple has begun offering raises to some AFM engineers, but these remain far lower than Meta’s compensation packages, which can exceed $100 million for top talent like Gunter.

Lee, who was Pang’s first hire at Apple, and Gunter, a distinguished engineer, are seen as pivotal figures in Apple’s AI strategy.

Their departures underscore the competitive battle for AI talent as major tech companies race to dominate the next generation of AI-powered services.

Neither Apple nor Meta have commented on the latest reports.

However, with Meta’s aggressive hiring and unprecedented investments in data centres and infrastructure, the company appears intent on cementing itself as a leader in advanced AI research and development.