Can’t keep even 200 million US dollars? ! From Apple to Meta, the “most expensive Chinese” in Silicon Valley switch to OpenAI

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The battle for AI talent in Silicon Valley has entered a fierce stage.

According to reports from multiple media including The Information and Reuters, and confirmed by an OpenAI spokesperson, OpenAI successfully poached top AI researcher Ruoming Pang from Meta.

It is reported that Meta offered a multi-year salary package worth more than US$200 million in order to poach Ruoming Pang from Apple last year.

However, even with such a high compensation package, he chose to leave after working at Meta for about seven months after several months of “strong pursuit” by OpenAI.

Ruoming Pang has completed three leaps from Apple to Meta, and then from Meta to OpenAI in the past 12 months. According to reports, OpenAI conducted an aggressive recruitment process for several months for this poaching.

Ruoming Pang graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University with a bachelor’s degree, and then received a master’s and doctorate in computer science from the University of Southern California (USC).

Ruoming Pang participated in and led the research and development work related to large-scale models during his time at Apple. At that time, Apple was trying to speed up the wave of generative AI and needed to establish its own model system.

During his time at Apple, he was responsible for core work in model-related directions. Apple has long been known for its terminal ecosystem, but with the advent of the generative AI wave, it must build its own basic model capabilities. The internal team needs to build the training framework, data system and model deployment structure from scratch, and Ruoming Pang is one of the key figures in promoting the construction of these infrastructures.

Meta also extended an olive branch to him when it established a “super-intelligent laboratory” in a high-profile manner last year.

According to Reuters, in order to lure him away from Apple, Meta offered a long-term incentive package worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

At that moment, his name almost became an “iconic trophy” in the Silicon Valley headhunting circle.

Within Meta, he is mainly responsible for model training and infrastructure system construction. The competition for large models is no longer simply about stacking parameters, but about how to make training more stable, efficient, and scalable.

Meta has yet to officially comment on the matter.

As OpenAI continues to recruit top minds from around the world, it’s clear that the arms race surrounding AI leaders is far from over.