Apple Loses AI Robotics Researcher to Meta

The leader of the artificial intelligence team for robotics at Apple, Jiang Zhang, is leaving the company to join Meta, Bloomberg reports. Zhang joined Meta Robotics Studio on Tuesday. Three other artificial intelligence researchers are also leaving Apple's Foundation Models AI team to move to OpenAI and Anthropic, continuing the mass exodus that began in July. Since the beginning of the year, at least a dozen AI experts have left Apple for Meta, OpenAI, and other companies. Meta offers AI engineers high salaries that competitors cannot match. This is why the company was able to attract Apple's head of foundational models, Ruoming Pan, with a compensation package of $200 million.

Zhang was involved in developing automation technologies and exploring the role of artificial intelligence in various products. At the same time, his team was not involved in creating a virtual robot companion. According to the Financial Times, the mass exodus from Apple has triggered a crisis of confidence in the industry regarding the company's future in artificial intelligence. Apple continues to work on improving Siri, particularly with a smarter version of LLM expected next year. However, the company has faced significant delays in releasing the updated Apple Intelligence for Siri, which did not make it into iOS 18.

At an employee meeting in August, software engineering chief Craig Federighi stated that Apple has successfully developed a second-generation Siri architecture that will bring significant improvements in 2026. The company is also considering using third-party solutions to enhance Siri's capabilities and is already in talks with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. A final decision has not yet been made, but fluctuations in Apple's strategic plans are causing tension within the team working on LLM. Additional artificial intelligence specialists are actively interviewing with other companies.