Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, and Eddy Cue, senior vice president of services at Apple. <\/p>\n
(Bloomberg) — Apple Inc.\u2019s lead artificial intelligence researcher for robotics has departed the company to join Meta Platforms Inc.\u2019s competing effort, part of an exodus of AI talent from the iPhone maker.<\/p>\n
The employee, Jian Zhang, joined the Meta Robotics Studio, the social media company confirmed on Tuesday. Separately, three more AI researchers are leaving Apple\u2019s in-house large language models team, adding to upheaval in that group, according to people with knowledge of the matter.<\/p>\n
Most Read from Bloomberg<\/p>\n
The latest string of departures \u2014 all taking place over the last week \u2014 includes John Peebles, Nan Du and Zhao Meng, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the moves haven\u2019t been announced.<\/p>\n
They were all part of an Apple Foundation Models team that has lost roughly 10 members, including its chief, in recent weeks. The group was central to the creation of the Apple Intelligence platform, launched last year as part of the company\u2019s bid to catch up in AI.<\/p>\n
Apple is now discussing internally whether to rely more on outside technology, rather than just homegrown models, Bloomberg News has reported.<\/p>\n
Peebles and Du are heading to OpenAI, while Zhao is joining Anthropic PBC. Many of their colleagues previously defected to Meta, which has enticed workers with staggering pay increases. Ruoming Pang, who ran Apple\u2019s models team, left for a multiyear, $200 million package.<\/p>\n
It hasn\u2019t been entirely smooth sailing for Meta, though. Several of the recently hired AI researchers have already quit, according to Wired.<\/p>\n
Spokespeople for Apple and OpenAI declined to comment on the personnel changes. Anthropic didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
WATCH: Mark Gurman reports on Apple\u2019s lead artificial intelligence researcher for robotics departing the company to join Meta Platforms.Source: Bloomberg <\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Apple shares briefly dipped to a session low on Tuesday after Bloomberg reported on the moves. The stock was down 1.5% to $228.77 as of 3:08 p.m. in New York.<\/p>\n
Zhang, the robotics researcher, led a small team of academics focused on automation technology and the role of AI in such products. That team has already suffered some turnover, with one of Zhang\u2019s reports, Mario Srouji, leaving to run AI products at Archer Aviation Inc. in April.<\/p>\n
The robotics research group is located within Apple\u2019s artificial intelligence and machine learning division. It\u2019s separate from the company\u2019s robotics product development organization, which was moved to Apple\u2019s hardware engineering department earlier this year.<\/p>\n
Story Continues <\/p>\n
Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, and Eddy Cue, senior vice president of services at Apple.Photographer: David Paul Morris\/Bloomberg <\/p>\n
Robotics has become a critical piece of Apple\u2019s future pipeline, with the company planning a slew of devices. That includes a tabletop machine with a moving screen, as well as a robotic arm for use in retail stores and manufacturing, Bloomberg has reported.<\/p>\n
Meta, meanwhile, is moving ahead with its own products. In addition to offering smart glasses and AI features, the company is investing heavily in an operating system and underlying hardware components for humanoid robots, Bloomberg reported in February.<\/p>\n
Zhang will be developing products at the Robotics Studio, which is part of Meta\u2019s Reality Labs division.<\/p>\n
Apple\u2019s AI staff departures are expected to continue, with several more employees actively interviewing for jobs at other companies, according to the people. The poor response to Apple Intelligence and the company\u2019s potential shift toward using third-party models have contributed to worsening morale, they said.<\/p>\n
–With assistance from Shirin Ghaffary.<\/p>\n
(Updates with shares in ninth paragraph.)<\/p>\n
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek<\/p>\n
\u00a92025 Bloomberg L.P.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, and Eddy Cue, senior vice president of services at Apple. (Bloomberg) —…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,311,313,289,290,4932,14229,30178,18,19,17,30176,30177,3337,308,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-39352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-apple","10":"tag-apple-intelligence","11":"tag-artificial-intelligence","12":"tag-artificialintelligence","13":"tag-bloomberg","14":"tag-bloomberg-news","15":"tag-eddy-cue","16":"tag-eire","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-jian-zhang","20":"tag-john-peebles","21":"tag-meta-platforms","22":"tag-sam-altman","23":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}