Grabbing war heats up: Apple's AI core team is almost tapped out

The Financial Times posted on August 7 that since 2025, various firms have launched poaching programs, resulting in a serious loss of staff from Apple's AI team, who have joined Meta, OpenAI, xAI, and others. The most notable departures are Ruoming Pang, the head of Apple's basic modeling team, and Bowen Zhang, Apple's key researcher in multimodal AI. In addition, two other researchers from Apple's AI team - Tom Gunter and Mark Lee - recently joined Meta, and industry insiders believe these departures reflect a "crisis of confidence" at Apple in the AI space. "In a recent earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave the AI team a boost, saying that the AI "cake" will be bigger than smartphones and the Internet, so Apple has now put the development of AI business in the first place. (Sina Technology)