Apple’s AI struggles could get deeper as reports this week suggest the company has lost one of its senior AI engineers to Meta. Ruoming Pang, part of Apple’s team developing new foundational models has left the Cupertino-based giant to join Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta where he is setting up a team to run the Superintelligence division. 

The report from Bloomberg says that Pang had joined Apple in 2021 and is leaving the company to earn the big bucks at Meta where Zuckerberg has poached senior AI engineers from major companies in the last few months. 

Apple’s AI Issues Face More Challenges 

Losing a senior executive like Pang does not augur well for a company that is struggling to get its AI ambitions off the ground. Apple was unable to showcase new AI features at the WWDC 2025 last month, and confirmed its decision to only highlight any new AI stuff when it is ready for a public rollout. 

The company has been criticised for overblowing its Siri AI at the iPhone 16 launch event in 2024, and none of the advertised features have made it to the market, facing delays up to April 2026 going by various reports. 

The Brain Drain Conundrum

The Bloomberg report highlights the role of Pang, where he was leading a team of 100 engineers who were responsible for working on new LLMs for the company. Apple and AI has been a slow process, and it has seen rivals OpenAI and Google march forward at brisk pace.

Even Meta is assembling a team of AI experts and investing billions to take its own AI ambitions to a higher level. Siri AI is probably going to be the least of Apple’s concerns and it clearly needs to cut down on the AI exodus if it intends to compete in the arena over the next few years.

Apple’s focus on privacy is laudable but the company is losing touch with the market and it needs the right impetus and workforce to build the momentum to succeed in the AI battle.