Meta poached former Apple manager Ruoming Pang with a compensation package in the hundreds of millions of dollars, marking a new compensation high in the AI talent wars.
Meta confirmed on Monday that it hired Pang to join its superintelligence team, which is focused on developing AI that surpasses human capabilities. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Meta offered the former Apple distinguished engineer a pay package of more than $200 million across several years.
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Pang’s compensation package includes a base salary, signing bonus, and Meta shares, with stock awards comprising the bulk of the pay. Most of the compensation is tied to stock performance targets and years of loyalty, so Pang may not receive the full amount if Meta stock doesn’t perform well or if he decides to leave the company quickly.
Bloomberg noted that Apple decided not to match Meta’s offer because it substantially surpasses the pay typically offered to top Apple executives. Apple CEO Tim Cook, for example, made $74.6 million last year, including a base salary of $3 million, $58.1 million in stock awards, $12 million in non-equity incentive compensation, and $1.5 million in other compensation.
Other major Meta hires for its superintelligence team are being offered similar pay packages, per Bloomberg. Meta announced last month in a leaked memo that it had hired leading AI researchers from other companies, including ChatGPT co-creator Shengjia Zhao from OpenAI and engineer Joel Pobar from Anthropic, to work on superintelligence.
Pang worked at Google for 15 years before leaving in 2021 to join Apple, where he led a 100-person team developing AI models for Apple Intelligence.
Mark Zuckerberg. Photo by Emma McIntyre/WireImage
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, 41, has lately taken a personal interest in adding more AI talent to the company. Zuckerberg has personally reached out to top AI scientists with cold emails and invited them to his homes to discuss offers to join Meta.
Meta also made a a $14.3 billion investment in AI data training startup Scale AI last month, and in the process brought over Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang to become Meta’s Chief AI Officer.
Zuckerberg’s goal is to make Meta the first company to achieve superintelligence, ahead of rivals like OpenAI and Google, and embed the advanced AI in Meta’s products, like its bestselling smart glasses.
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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, 40, said last month that Meta had offered OpenAI researchers “$100 million signing bonuses” and even more in annual compensation, a claim that Meta executives later refuted. OpenAI’s Chief Research Officer, Mark Chen, stated last week in a leaked Slack message to staff that OpenAI would “recalibrate” compensation in response to the poaching.
Meta stock was up over 20% year-to-date at the time of writing.
