Apple Loses 4th AI Researcher to Meta in Just One Month: Report

Apple’s internal AI division has taken another hit, with a fourth researcher leaving the company in just a month, according to a report from Bloomberg.

The latest to exit is Bowen Zhang, who specialized in multimodal AI and was part of Apple’s foundation models group, the team behind Apple Intelligence.

Zhang is reportedly joining Meta’s newly formed superintelligence team, which has already hired several other former Apple researchers in recent weeks. Among those are Ruoming Pang, the group’s former lead, along with Tom Gunter and Mark Lee. Pang’s move reportedly came with a compensation package valued at over $200 million, according to Bloomberg.

The series of departures has raised questions about the future of Apple’s foundation models group. Sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that morale within the team has slipped, and several engineers are now exploring opportunities elsewhere. Apple has responded by increasing compensation in some cases, but insiders say the raises don’t match offers from rivals like Meta.

While Apple continues to emphasize the importance of developing its own AI tools, Bloomberg reports the company is also weighing the use of external models to power new features in Siri and other products. Potential partners include OpenAI and Anthropic.

These developments come as competitors push ahead with more advanced cloud-based AI systems. Apple, which prioritizes on-device processing for privacy reasons, currently uses smaller models than many of its peers—something insiders say could be slowing progress.

It’s clear Apple’s falling behind rivals like Google and OpenAI when it comes to generative AI. The smarter Siri isn’t even out yet and it’s reportedly not coming until 2026.