Meta Platforms has secured two more top engineers from Apple’s AI research unit to join its Superintelligence Labs team. Mark Lee and Tom Gunter will follow their former boss, Ruoming Pang, who joined Meta earlier this month on a reported $200 million package. Lee has already started at Meta, while Gunter is set to begin shortly.
Background of the New Hires
Both Lee and Gunter were central to Apple’s Foundation Models group. Lee was the first researcher hired by Pang when the unit formed. Gunter spent eight years at Apple and held the title of distinguished engineer before his departure in late June. Sources say the two bring deep experience in large language models and generative AI features used across Apple products.
Meta’s Growing AI Ambition
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has declared that achieving AI leadership is the company’s top priority and has pledged massive investments in data centers and talent. The addition of Lee and Gunter follows a string of hires from Apple, OpenAI, and other competitors. Earlier recruits include former GitHub head Nat Friedman and Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang.
What Superintelligence Labs Will Do
Superintelligence Labs aims to build AI systems that perform tasks at or beyond the human level. The division focuses on large model research and advanced reasoning capabilities. By bringing in engineers who helped shape Apple’s internal AI features, such as email summarization and priority notifications, Meta hopes to accelerate its own feature development in products like Facebook, Instagram, and its AI assistants.
Impact on Apple’s AI Team
These departures have fueled reports of turmoil within Apple’s Foundation Models unit. The team is under pressure to deliver breakthrough models for Siri and Apple Intelligence. Industry observers note that Apple has begun weighing whether to augment its in‑house work with third‑party AI systems from OpenAI or Anthropic to fill gaps in its roadmap.
The Wider AI Talent Market
The competition for AI talent has reached new heights as leading firms offer multi‑year packages valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. Sam Altman of OpenAI has said that Meta approached his engineers with bonuses as large as $100 million. This trend further highlights the notion that the future of innovation will be based on those who can attract and hold the finest of AI talent.
The recent recruits of Meta at Apple indicate that it is a race between tech giants to get on a team to take AI beyond the present boundaries. It now seems that with added expertise in the fields of Lee and Gunter, Meta Superintelligence Labs will be in a position to tackle some of the most daunting issues in generative AI and large-scale model research.
