Meta lured AI exec away from Apple with blockbuster $200M pay package

AppleInsider

Meta's poaching of a top Apple Intelligence executive has been a costly exercise, with the social giant doling out $200 million for the worker.

Apple Intelligence executive set to get $200M payoff for Meta poaching

On Monday, reports surfaced about the head of Apple's foundational models team, Ruoming Pang, being poached by Meta. While at the time it was thought that the pay package was worth tens of millions of dollars per year, the total compensation seems to have extended to nine figures.

According to Bloomberg, Pang will be paid more than $200 million across several years, conditions permitting. Despite its massive size, the package is allegedly in line with other major hires for Meta's Superintelligence Labs team.

Others on the MSL team include former GitHub head Nat Friedman, Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang, and AI startup founder Daniel Gross.

Target-led

The compensation package is divided up into smaller elements. This includes a base salary and a signing bonus, which are thought to be high to counter situations where an employee had to walk away from significant startup equity.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described in June his battle with Meta over employees, claiming that signing bonus offers were as high as $100 million in some cases.

Stock will be the largest segment of the package, with payouts based on specific targets, such as Meta's stock growing by a specific percentage in a year. The stock they receive will also be vested for longer than the typical four-year schedule typically offered to employees.

Cash-heavy temptation

The poaching of Pang from Apple is only part of Meta's campaign to pull as much high-level talent as possible into its teams. The sheer sums at play, in a potentially lucrative segment in the tech industry, make it hard for anyone else to compete.

While Apple famously has a massive amount of resources on hand, it apparently didn't attempt to match the offer. One of the reasons was supposedly because Pang's alleged compensation package was too great, in excess of what other executives at Apple would receive, including CEO Tim Cook.

It's not just a big package in the tech industry. It is believed that the MSL team's compensation is among the highest of any corporate job. Even when compared with CEOs at major banks.

For Apple, its failure to hold on to Pang may hurt its Foundation Model team. To compensate for the loss, the team is now being run by Zhifeng Chen, with new managers including Chong Wang, Zirui Wang, Ching-Cheng Chui, and Guoli Yin.

The brain drain may continue, however, as Meta is just as well-heeled as Apple and other tech giants rushing into the AI space. Apple will almost certainly face more employees being tempted over to Mark Zuckerberg's operation with massive sacks of cash.

It hasn't yet decided to take on Meta in a head-to-head employee money fight. But, with companies persistently hungry for specialized AI talent, Apple may be forced into doing so in the future.



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hammeroftruth

Facebook overpays for everything. 

It also shows that Apple intelligence isn’t far enough in development to need him right now. The trade off of having a robust model to give you what you want comes at the cost of understanding more about you and that runs afoul of Apple’s privacy policies. Plus mixing it with Siri has made it much worse because of how it’s been cobbled together from the beginning. Add HomeKit and you have one giant steaming pile. 

mpantone

Zuck is a nimrod.

This hiring strategy isn't sustainable. He's going to shell out a billion for five similar hires? That's crazy.

And ultimately it's bad for employee morale at Meta. Think of all of the people there. They will look at their own compensation packages and say, "Hey, what am I? Chopped liver?" Even if they wouldn't be offered $200M, many will probably think about sending out discreet feelers to see what others would offer for their services. And who wants to be this new hire's admin/executive assistant? "Gee, he's pulling in $200M and I'm getting $80K and drive a Honda Accord."

Now Zuck has one really rich albeit skilled employee and created quiet resentment amongst many.

The hiring escalation cannot continue forever. At some point, someone is going to say, "your position is eliminated" to one of these high-earning AI scientists. That person will be replaced by someone making $500K and a bunch of Nvidia AI clusters (the latter who will work 24x7 and don't get sick or take vacations).

Good on Pang for seizing the opportunity. Take Zuck's stupid money and invest it elsewhere.

edited July 10

anthogag

I hope Zuckerberg gets very little bang for his buck. Perhaps the Saudis will start to throw obscene levels of money at AI hiring; we're seeing it for soccer players.  

stewarts

hammeroftruth said:

Facebook overpays for everything. 

It also shows that Apple intelligence isn’t far enough in development to need him right now. The trade off of having a robust model to give you what you want comes at the cost of understanding more about you and that runs afoul of Apple’s privacy policies. Plus mixing it with Siri has made it much worse because of how it’s been cobbled together from the beginning. Add HomeKit and you have one giant steaming pile. 

Not being involved in Apple’s efforts to bring this together, I can’t possibly know how difficult it is to solve, but my general feeling is that no one is rooting for Meta to win so that we can have all our data be used against us to make them and their advertisers money.

Everyone seems to think that Siri is a mess because it can’t do everything yesterday, but the fact is that Siri can do lots of things it couldn’t before. Real progress is being made and it is a joy and a relief every time it works in a way that it didn’t before.

This is true with HomePod and AppleTV as well. It feels like the basics are being overlooked due to overthinking but since they haven’t given up, I remain hopeful that they will eventually get it figured out (the same way that the Mac and other products improved significantly after Jony Ives left).

HomeKit seemed inexplicably behind until Apple revealed that they contributed the technology to create Matter, creating a universal standard for everything to work together seamlessly.

I am as impatient as anyone for more, rooting for them to get it working in the right way as quickly as possible, before others do.,, and offer users the delightful experiences that seem so obvious once you’ve experienced them.

The rumored HomePad hub with robotic arm feels like a game changer if it comes with a new Ui that allows controlling it with gestures in the air from a distance and an upgraded conversational Siri.

Remember that these are the same Apple geniuses who brought us the iPhone, iPad, AppleWatch, AirPods, and the amazing AppleVision Pro. Their pipeline is full of slick new stuff. Getting the software right and reducing the advertising interruptions to be opt-in only and non-intrusive would make me even more delighted and proud that I’m a stockholder.

stabitha_christie

After the disaster that was the whole Metaverse, this just smells of desperation. Disaster is being generous, did anything come of the Metaverse other than the announcement? Anyway, so they are buying all the talent they can get but what is the vision? Their existing platforms, Facebook + Instagram, have become overrun by AI slop. So the plan is to make more slop creation tools? You can't hire your way into great products, you have to have an idea of what you are going to do. Zuck has proven that he isn't the idea guy, everything he has was stolen or purchased. 

mikethemartian

Stabitha_Christie said:

After the disaster that was the whole Metaverse, this just smells of desperation. Disaster is being generous, did anything come of the Metaverse other than the announcement? Anyway, so they are buying all the talent they can get but what is the vision? Their existing platforms, Facebook + Instagram, have become overrun by AI slop. So the plan is to make more slop creation tools? You can't hire your way into great products, you have to have an idea of what you are going to do. Zuck has proven that he isn't the idea guy, everything he has was stolen or purchased. 

Compared to the commercial success of the Vision Pro?

mpantone

Remember that Meta purchased Oculus for $2 billion back in 2014. Not sure if they made recouped their costs.

Ultimately I think a lot of the technology Apple has developed for the AVP will find uses elsewhere outside of a VR HMD (the latter has a lot of problems as a viable mainstream platform). Remember that Apple has been dabbling with AR for at least a decade.

edited July 10

wesley_hilliard

mikethemartian said:

Stabitha_Christie said:

After the disaster that was the whole Metaverse, this just smells of desperation. Disaster is being generous, did anything come of the Metaverse other than the announcement? Anyway, so they are buying all the talent they can get but what is the vision? Their existing platforms, Facebook + Instagram, have become overrun by AI slop. So the plan is to make more slop creation tools? You can't hire your way into great products, you have to have an idea of what you are going to do. Zuck has proven that he isn't the idea guy, everything he has was stolen or purchased. 

Compared to the commercial success of the Vision Pro?

Actually yes. The Metaverse is an unmitigated disaster, as will the pursuit of the fictional technology "Artificial Superintelligence," or whatever dumb name and goalpost they have this week.

The Apple Vision Pro exists, it works really well, and you can buy it in store right now. Apple has sold north of 600k units at this point at that price and design. We can't determine if it is a success or failure because we don't know Apple's win/lose conditions. For all we know, it's doing what they expected it to do as a first-generation $3,500 face computer.

But, given one product exists and the other doesn't I'd say there's really no comparison here.

mpantone

Meta's grand Metaverse vision is the failure. Their actual shipping VR hardware is acceptable and competitive.

I have an Oculus Rift S and it fulfills most of its 6+ year old limited usage cases at close to 1/8th the price of the AVR (not adjusted for inflation).

AVP has a clearly better display and refresh rate but those aren't not the sole metrics. My geriatric Rift S is WAY lighter and that's super important for VR HMDs, even if it's an ugly piece of Lenovo-manufactured plastic-wrapped crap.

The AVP is both too expensive and too heavy to be of much interest to Joe Consumer. This has been the ongoing problem for VR HMDs for the past 30+ years and Apple is continuing this dreadful narrative.

Stop sugarcoating Apple and their overpriced AVP. It is not worth its price which is why Apple quickly scaled back production.

And this discussion isn't limited to fancy VR hardware. Google Cardboard is pretty much dead because no one want to wear their smartphones on their heads, even if the mounting hardware is nearly free.

Stop thinking of VR as the Next Big Thing because it's not. Hell, wireless earbuds took over the world because Joe Consumer hates the bulk of headphones. VR HMDs have their place in some commercial, enterprise, and scientific workloads. The user experience sucks for 95% of Joe Consumer's waking hours.

And I'll point out right here that this tangent was brought to us by an AppleInsider staffer. This is supposed to be a thread about AI researchers and their salaries which is what I covered in my first response (reply #2).

At least stick with the bloody topic if you are going to hold forum participants to that same criterium.

edited July 10

wesley_hilliard

mpantone said:

Meta's grand Metaverse vision is the failure. Their actual shipping VR hardware is acceptable and competitive.

I have an Oculus Rift S and it fulfills most of its 6+ year old limited usage cases at close to 1/8th the price of the AVR (not adjusted for inflation).

AVP has a clearly better display and refresh rate but those aren't not the sole metrics. My geriatric Rift S is WAY lighter and that's super important for VR HMDs, even if it's an ugly piece of Lenovo-manufactured plastic-wrapped crap.

The AVP is both too expensive and too heavy to be of much interest to Joe Consumer. This has been the ongoing problem for VR HMDs for the past 30+ years and Apple is continuing this dreadful narrative.

Stop sugarcoating Apple and their overpriced AVP. It is not worth its price which is why Apple quickly scaled back production.

And this discussion isn't limited to fancy VR hardware. Google Cardboard is pretty much dead because no one want to wear their smartphones on their heads, even if the mounting hardware is nearly free.

Stop thinking of VR as the Next Big Thing because it's not. Hell, wireless earbuds took over the world because Joe Consumer hates the bulk of headphones. VR HMDs have their place in some commercial, enterprise, and scientific workloads. The user experience sucks for 95% of Joe Consumer's waking hours.

And I'll point out right here that this tangent was brought to us by an AppleInsider staffer. This is supposed to be a thread about AI researchers and their salaries which is what I covered in my first response (reply #2).

At least stick with the bloody topic if you are going to hold forum participants to that same criterium.

The discussion is on topic. I replied to someone that compared the success of the Apple Vision Pro to the success of the metaverse.

Don't comment on moderation practices. Leave moderation to the mods, and flag posts that violate the rules.

No one is defending anything. No one can know what Apple's success metric is except Apple. And as Tim Cook said, examining the supply chain for hints about Apple's business is like looking at a piece of a bigger picture. You're not going to get enough data to represent anything.

but the reality is that the metaverse doesn't exist. Apple Vision Pro does. It's a silly comparison.

danox

Stabitha_Christie said:

After the disaster that was the whole Metaverse, this just smells of desperation. Disaster is being generous, did anything come of the Metaverse other than the announcement? Anyway, so they are buying all the talent they can get but what is the vision? Their existing platforms, Facebook + Instagram, have become overrun by AI slop. So the plan is to make more slop creation tools? You can't hire your way into great products, you have to have an idea of what you are going to do. Zuck has proven that he isn't the idea guy, everything he has was stolen or purchased. 

Microsoft and Meta are geniuses, no matter how much they spend on acquisitions that don’t work and no matter how much money they flush down the toilet chasing every new fad everything‘s cool……

danox

mikethemartian said:

Stabitha_Christie said:

After the disaster that was the whole Metaverse, this just smells of desperation. Disaster is being generous, did anything come of the Metaverse other than the announcement? Anyway, so they are buying all the talent they can get but what is the vision? Their existing platforms, Facebook + Instagram, have become overrun by AI slop. So the plan is to make more slop creation tools? You can't hire your way into great products, you have to have an idea of what you are going to do. Zuck has proven that he isn't the idea guy, everything he has was stolen or purchased. 

Compared to the commercial success of the Vision Pro?

The bottom line is Apple selling Vision Pro at a lost I doubt it, it does not matter what your marketshare is. The only thing that counts is whether or not you make a profit on what you do sell, Apple, since the return of Steve Jobs learned that being profitable on what you do manage to sell is more important than going for marketshare and losing money in the process. Apple is still in a very good position in comparison to their competition at the end of the day. The C2 modem, R2 and the M5 processors are just around the corner. 

Does that make Apple a buy, sell or hold? When you look at them in comparison to their tech competition?

edited July 11