Meta’s $200 million bet on AI talent escalates Silicon Valley’s race for superintelligence

Meta has poached one of Apple’s top artificial intelligence researchers, offering a pay package worth more than $200 million—a rare sum even in Silicon Valley’s competitive landscape. Ruoming Pang, who led Apple’s AI models team, is joining Meta’s “superintelligence” group, according to Bloomberg, a unit tasked with developing systems that can match or surpass human capabilities.

The move highlights the aggressive push by Meta to secure top-tier talent as it races rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic to build the next generation of artificial intelligence systems. Alongside Pang, Meta has recently brought on figures such as former GitHub chief executive Nat Friedman, AI investor and entrepreneur Daniel Gross, and Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang, who is now serving as Meta’s chief AI officer.

The bulk of the pay package offered to Pang is tied to Meta’s stock performance, structured as a mix of base salary, signing bonus, and long-term equity incentives that vest over several years, requiring employees to remain with the company while meeting performance targets to receive the full payout.

Apple, known for its disciplined approach to compensation, chose not to match the offer, reserving such outsized packages only for its chief executive, Tim Cook. The recruitment coup by Meta comes amid broader reports of the company offering large incentives to lure talent from competitors. Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, recently said that Meta had dangled bonuses as high as $100 million to entice his employees.

The high-stakes talent war highlights the escalating cost of leadership in AI, with companies like Meta willing to pay extraordinary sums to secure researchers they believe will give them an edge in developing advanced systems that could transform the technology industry.

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