Latest news with #FoundationModels
Economic Times
7 days ago
- Business
- Economic Times
Top Meta engineers have joined xAI: CEO Elon Musk
Reuters Billionaire Elon Musk has finally waded into the ongoing AI talent battle initiated by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The competition for top talent has seen companies such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft losing key people, especially to Meta's newly formed Superintelligence Labs. Taking to X, Musk revealed that many former Meta engineers have joined his AI startup, xAI. However, he pointed out that unlike Meta, xAI isn't offering 'insane' pay packages. 'Many strong Meta engineers have and are joining xAI and without the need for insane initial comp (still great, but not unsustainably high),' Musk posted. 'Also, xAI has vastly more market cap growth potential than Meta,' he went on to describe his company as being 'hyper merit-based' and said, 'Do something great and your comp can shift substantially higher'.On Sunday, Musk posted a shoutout to engineers, saying, 'For ultra-hardcore engineers, @xAI is the place to be.' Also Read: AI talent wars: Altman's OpenAI poaches top engineers from Musk, Zuckerberg firms Meta responds Musk isn't alone in calling out Meta for its high compensation offers. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, which has been Meta's prime poaching target, has also made similar remarks on Zuckerberg's aggressive hiring tactics, noting that some bonuses go up to $100 the Meta founder has dismissed these claims, saying the numbers are 'inaccurate'.Speaking to investors, he explained, 'We're building an elite, talent-dense team. If you're going to be spending hundreds of billions of dollars on computers and building out multiple gigawatts of clusters, then it really does make sense to compete super hard and do whatever it takes to get, you know, 50 or 70 or whatever it is, top researchers to build your team.'Some of Meta's major hires in recent months include Daniel Gross (CEO of AI startup Safe Superintelligence), Ruoming Pang (leader of Apple's Foundation Models team), and Nat Friedman (former GitHub CEO), along with several other top researchers from big and small companies. Also Read: Top AI talent attracted not just by paycheques: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg Elevate your knowledge and leadership skills at a cost cheaper than your daily tea. The airport lounge war has begun — and DreamFolks is losing How Mukesh Ambani's risky bet has now become Reliance's superpower Indian IT firms never reveal the truth hiding behind 'strong' deal wins Did Meesho's Valmo really deliver a knockout punch to e-commerce logistics? Stock Radar: Strides Pharma stock hits fresh 52-week high in July; will the rally continue in August? Dividend yield: A most misunderstood parameter, both by traders & investors; 5 stocks with an upside potential of over 33% Time to buy may be good or bad, but business should be good: 5 mid-caps from different sectors with upside potential of up to 25% For investors who can think beyond Trump: 5 large-cap stocks with an upside potential of up to 36%
Time of India
7 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Top Meta engineers have joined xAI: CEO Elon Musk
Billionaire Elon Musk has finally waded into the ongoing AI talent battle initiated by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg . The competition for top talent has seen companies such as Apple , Google, and Microsoft losing key people, especially to Meta 's newly formed Superintelligence to X, Musk revealed that many former Meta engineers have joined his AI startup, xAI . However, he pointed out that unlike Meta, xAI isn't offering 'insane' pay packages.'Many strong Meta engineers have and are joining xAI and without the need for insane initial comp (still great, but not unsustainably high),' Musk posted.'Also, xAI has vastly more market cap growth potential than Meta,' he went on to describe his company as being 'hyper merit-based' and said, 'Do something great and your comp can shift substantially higher'.On Sunday, Musk posted a shoutout to engineers, saying, 'For ultra-hardcore engineers, @xAI is the place to be.'Musk isn't alone in calling out Meta for its high compensation offers. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI , which has been Meta's prime poaching target, has also made similar remarks on Zuckerberg's aggressive hiring tactics, noting that some bonuses go up to $100 the Meta founder has dismissed these claims, saying the numbers are 'inaccurate'.Speaking to investors, he explained, 'We're building an elite, talent-dense team. If you're going to be spending hundreds of billions of dollars on computers and building out multiple gigawatts of clusters, then it really does make sense to compete super hard and do whatever it takes to get, you know, 50 or 70 or whatever it is, top researchers to build your team.'Some of Meta's major hires in recent months include Daniel Gross (CEO of AI startup Safe Superintelligence), Ruoming Pang (leader of Apple's Foundation Models team), and Nat Friedman (former GitHub CEO), along with several other top researchers from big and small companies.
Indian Express
24-07-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
Google CEO Sundar Pichai on AI talent war: ‘Our talent retention is healthy'
Google CEO Sundar Pichai says the company continues to attract top AI talent, brushing off concerns about the ongoing AI talent war in Silicon Valley, where top tech companies are poaching talent from each other to stay ahead in the intensifying AI race. During Alphabet's second-quarter earnings call, Pichai said Google has seen such moments before and that its core metrics remain 'healthy.' 'We continue to look at both our retention metrics, as well as the new talent coming in, and both are healthy,' Pichai said on the earnings call. 'I do know individual cases can make headlines, but when we look at the numbers deeply, I think we are doing well through this moment.' Pichai also emphasised that Google understands what it takes to keep top AI researchers satisfied and it isn't all about the money. He cited the company's investments in greater access to compute, referring to the latest and most advanced computer chips. At a time when the world's leading tech companies are laying off parts of their workforce due to the rise of artificial intelligence, they are simultaneously hiring specialised AI researchers, both from top PhD programs in machine learning and from among industry veterans who have created platforms at leading tech companies. From Meta and OpenAI to Google and Microsoft, these companies are aggressively poaching top AI talent from each other. With Meta launching its Superintelligence Lab and hiring Apple's Foundation Models lead Ruoming Pang with a reported package exceeding $200 million, talent and compute have become the defining currencies in the AI world. In recent months, Meta also recruited Scale AI founder Alexandre Wang and a dozen veterans from OpenAI and DeepMind, signaling its deepening investment in AI. In June, Adam Sadovsky. who spent nearly 18 years at Google, most recently as a distinguished software engineer and senior director at DeepMind left the company to join Microsoft. He now serves as a corporate vice president at Microsoft AI. This current AI hiring frenzy echoes the intense 'war for talent' between Microsoft and Google in the 2000s, triggered by Google's meteoric rise. At the time, Google's focus on search attracted some of the brightest engineering minds, forcing Microsoft to revise its hiring and retention strategies. In 2005, Microsoft even sued Google after executive Kai-Fu Lee left the company to join Google, a milestone case that highlighted the fierce competition between the two tech giants over top talent.
India.com
11-07-2025
- Business
- India.com
Who is Ruoming Pang, ex-Apple AI engineer, hired by Zuckerberg with a pay package more than Tim Cook's salary
In a clear sign of how intense the competition for AI talent has become, Meta has hired Ruoming Pang, a top engineer who used to lead Apple's AI models team. What's grabbing headlines is the size of the deal: Pang was offered more than USD 200 million to join Meta. He is now part of Meta's 'Superintelligence' team, which is working on powerful AI systems that can do tasks as well as, or even better than, humans. This pay package is one of the biggest ever given to an engineer, similar to what some top company CEOs earn. Apple decided not to match Meta's offer, showing how far companies are now willing to go to win in the AI race. Who is Ruoming Pang? The AI expert Meta just hired with a jaw-dropping USD 200 million offer Ruoming Pang is a well-known expert in artificial intelligence who has worked behind the scenes at some of the biggest tech companies in the world. He has a PhD from Princeton University and began his career at Google, where he helped build important AI tools like the Lingvo speech system and Zanzibar, a system Google uses to manage who can access its services. In 2021, he joined Apple and quickly rose to lead the team working on Apple's Foundation Models these are large AI models that power smart features like Genmoji, improved Siri, and on-device AI for personal notifications. He led over 100 engineers and played a big role in pushing Apple's AI projects forward, even though the company kept much of it out of the spotlight. Now, Pang is in the news for accepting a massive deal from Meta, worth over $200 million. This includes his salary, bonuses, and a large share in company stock. He will join Meta's new Superintelligence Lab, which is focused on building super-advanced AI systems that can think and perform tasks like humans—or even better. Meta has been hiring top AI talent from companies like Apple, Google, and OpenAI, and Ruoming Pang is one of its most important hires yet. Experts say Apple didn't even try to match Meta's huge offer—reportedly larger than what Apple CEO Tim Cook earns. Why did Meta offer Ruoming Pang over USD 200 million? Meta is going all-in on building super-powerful AI systems, and to do that, it's offering huge pay packages to top talent. Ruoming Pang's deal worth over USD 200 million is part of this bold strategy. According to reports shared by Bloomberg, Pang's offer includes a high base salary, a big signing bonus, and a large amount of Meta stock. Most of the stock will be given out slowly over time and is tied to how well Meta performs. This setup encourages him to stay with the company long-term and help it succeed.
Hans India
10-06-2025
- Hans India
WWDC 2025: Apple delivers biggest visual overhaul after iOS 7 in AI era
Analysts on Tuesday said that this year, Apple highlighted its one of the core strength: delivering a unified and seamless experience across all its hardware and added an additional visual appeal to it — the biggest visual overhaul after iOS 7. Apple has previewed iOS 26 at its flagship developer conference 'WWDC 2025' here — a major update that brings a beautiful new design, intelligent experiences, and improvements to the apps users rely on every day. The new design provides a more expressive and delightful experience across the system while maintaining the instant familiarity of iOS. Counterpoint Research Director, Tarun Pathak, told IANS that the updated visual design, featuring the new "liquid glass" aesthetic, is set to further enhance user engagement across Apple's device ecosystem. 'However, two announcements particularly captured our attention: 'On-device AI for Developers' and 'iPadOS Reimagined'. The ability for developers to access Apple's on-device models through the Foundation Models framework, coupled with the introduction of Apple Intelligence across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro, is a positive move in its AI journey where it is being perceived as being behind wrt the competitors,' Pathak explained. However, AI of 2025 is different to the AI hype of 2024. Users are still getting warmed upto AI use-cases and 'we have not see a killer use case yet'. The most impactful revelation came from the iPadOS updates. These enhancements will solidify the iPad's position as a robust device for both content creation and consumption on the go, Pathak noted. The tech giant showcased watchOS 26, offering a beautiful new look and even more intelligence for a more personalised experience, to support users in staying active, healthy, and connected. A new design with Liquid Glass makes features like the Smart Stack, Control Center, the Photos watch face, and in-app navigation and controls more expressive, while maintaining the instant familiarity of watchOS. According to Prabhu Ram, VP at CyberMedia Research (CMR), Apple adopted a fundamentals-first approach, emphasising user interface (UI) enhancements over AI. Rather than chasing speculative AI trends, Apple focused on delivering immediate, tangible value to users. 'A key highlight was the introduction of on-device access to Apple's large language model through the new Foundation Models framework. This move signals a decentralised AI strategy, empowering developers to create differentiated experiences directly on Apple devices,' Ram told IANS. However, the success of this approach will hinge on developer adoption, the strength of Apple's tooling, and the company's ability to iterate quickly. Apple's tightly integrated hardware ecosystem gives it a significant advantage and a unique opportunity to lead in AI monetization. However, this window of opportunity may close rapidly if Apple fails to keep pace, especially as agentic AI and cross-platform innovations accelerate elsewhere, said Ram.
