Overview

• Bowen Zhang left Apple’s foundation models team to join Meta’s Superintelligence Labs as its latest recruit.
• His departure represents the fourth loss in a month from Apple’s AI unit following Ruoming Pang, Tom Gunter and Mark Lee.
• Apple has responded with marginal salary increases for remaining researchers that still trail the packages offered by Meta.
• The company is evaluating external AI from OpenAI and Anthropic for Siri after successive team departures left its in-house roadmap unclear.
• Apple’s commitment to on-device processing has capped model size below cloud-based rivals and contributed to low morale within its AI division.