Meta Platforms Inc. has added two prominent AI researchers—Mark Lee and Tom Gunter—to its Superintelligence Labs team, intensifying the race for top artificial intelligence talent. The hires come shortly after Meta lured away Ruoming Pang, the former head of Apple's large language models (LLM) team, in a high-profile move.
Both Gunter and Lee were central figures within Apple’s Foundation Models team (AFM), the unit responsible for building generative AI systems. Lee, reportedly Pang’s first hire at Apple, recently joined Meta. Gunter, a highly respected AI engineer, was also among the most senior members of the AFM group. He briefly worked at another AI startup after departing Apple last month and has now committed to Meta.
The hires haven’t been publicly announced, but they highlight Meta's strategic focus on rapidly expanding its AI capabilities.
Tech giants like Meta, Apple, OpenAI, and Google are aggressively competing for AI engineers and researchers. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, has made artificial intelligence the company’s top strategic priority, funneling massive investments into talent, infrastructure, and computing.
In a recent Threads post, Zuckerberg revealed that Meta plans to “invest hundreds of billions of dollars into compute to build superintelligence.” He added that he aims to create “the most elite and talent-dense team in the industry.”
To support this ambition, some of Meta’s top AI employees now sit near Zuckerberg’s office in Menlo Park, allowing closer collaboration and quicker decision-making.
Meta is attracting top-tier AI talent with massive multi-year compensation packages, reportedly far exceeding Apple’s standard pay structure. Pang, for instance, received a deal valued at more than $200 million to make the switch. Gunter is now part of a select group of engineers receiving packages north of $100 million.
In contrast, Apple has been caught off guard by this surge in poaching. In an effort to retain its remaining AI team, the iPhone maker has started offering raises to key engineers within the AFM unit, which consists of around 100 members. However, those raises are still modest compared to Meta’s aggressive compensation tactics.
The wave of departures is a symptom of growing internal uncertainty within Apple’s AFM division. The team is at the core of Apple’s generative AI development, supporting products like Apple Intelligence and the Siri voice assistant.
Top executives, including Daphne Luong (head of AI research), John Giannandrea (SVP of AI), Mike Rockwell, and Craig Federighi (software heads), are currently evaluating whether to continue developing in-house AI models or rely on third-party solutions such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude for future Siri enhancements.
Apple is said to be exploring a hybrid model approach—one version powered by its own models and another integrated with third-party technologies. A final decision is expected before the revamped Siri launches in spring 2026.
The addition of Lee and Gunter marks another milestone in Meta’s broader plan to build “superintelligence”—a level of AI that surpasses human capabilities in key tasks. Meta’s Superintelligence Labs, where the two engineers will work, is at the forefront of this initiative.
With high-level talent, massive infrastructure investment, and executive-level support, Meta is positioning itself as a formidable force in the generative AI revolution.