Apple loses another top AI executive to Mark Zuckerberg’s dream team despite Meta’s hiring slowdown
Mark Zuckerberg’s ambitions for an AI superteam have claimed another casualty at Apple, with the iPhone maker losing another top executive, according to a Bloomberg report. The latest hiring by Meta comes at a time when the company is planning to slow down recruitment.
Frank Chu, a senior Apple executive who led the company’s AI-focused cloud infrastructure efforts, will soon be joining Meta’s Superintelligence Labs, the AI division recently formed by Zuckerberg and led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang.
Chu reportedly helped manage the running of large language models on Apple’s cloud servers and oversaw some training of the software. He was also involved in developing search features for Siri and entertainment services.
The departures from Apple to Meta began in July when Zuckerberg’s recruitment drive was in full swing. The billionaire is said to have personally contacted some recruits. Apple’s models team lead, Ruoming Pang, left that month for a reported package of over 200 million dollars at Meta. He was later followed by four engineers from Apple — Tom Gunter, Mark Lee, Bowen Zhang, and Yun Zhu.
Given the scale of his responsibilities, Chu is the second most high-profile departure from Apple after Pang. He worked as a lieutenant to Benoit Dupin, Apple’s executive in charge of AI infrastructure, who reports directly to John Giannandrea, Apple’s AI strategy chief. Chu will now reportedly work on a new team at Meta called MSL Infra, which will be responsible for AI infrastructure.
Zuckerberg’s recent hiring spree has also seen Meta poach executives from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. However, the company has reportedly confirmed in an internal memo that it is slowing down recruitment across all MSL teams.
“In order to responsibly manage our headcount and ensure our open and future roles are aligned with our top priorities, we’re temporarily pausing hiring across all MSL teams, with the exception of business-critical roles,” Meta wrote in a memo to hiring managers, as per Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, Wang recently clarified in a social media post that the company is “investing more and more into Meta Superintelligence Labs.”
These high-profile exits come at a time when Apple is struggling to catch up with rivals in the AI race, amid delays in its much-anticipated Siri revamp. The departure of Pang, along with reports that Apple may rely on third-party models, has sent shockwaves across its AI models team and is said to be the biggest reason behind the ongoing talent drain.
