Meta has hired Ruoming Pang, a former top AI engineer at Apple, by offering him a compensation package exceeding $200 million. Pang led Apple’s AI models team and is now part of Meta’s newly formed “superintelligence” group, which is building AI systems designed to match or surpass human capabilities.
This is one of several high-profile hires Meta has made as it races to dominate the AI space. The compensation packages are structured around long-term loyalty and performance. They include base salary, large signing bonuses, and Meta stock grants, with stock being the biggest part of the total offer. Many of these packages span beyond the standard four-year vesting timeline and are tied to specific company performance metrics.
Meta’s Push to Outbid Rivals
According to Bloomberg, Apple didn’t attempt to match Meta’s offer for Pang. Meta’s superintelligence division, which now includes GitHub’s former CEO Nat Friedman, AI entrepreneur Daniel Gross, and Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang, is making some of the most lucrative offers in tech. Meta acquired a 49% stake in Scale AI, valued at $14.3 billion, to bring Wang on board as its Chief AI Officer.
These deals rival, and in some cases surpass, CEO-level compensation at global banks. However, much of the payout is theoretical. It depends on the employee staying at Meta for multiple years and the stock hitting performance targets.
Sources told Bloomberg that the company is offering bigger bonuses to candidates who leave equity behind at startups. In these cases, Meta increases the signing amount to offset the loss. Some contracts also require the company’s stock to grow by a fixed percentage before certain portions of the compensation unlock.
OpenAI vs. Meta: The Talent Battle Escalates
Meta’s recruiting tactics have triggered pushback from rivals. On a podcast, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claimed that Meta offered signing bonuses up to $100 million to lure away his staff. He suggested that while the money was real, his employees stayed because of OpenAI’s culture and innovation-driven reputation.
In response, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, during an internal all-hands meeting, accused Altman of exaggerating. “Sam is just being dishonest here,” Bosworth said, according to The Verge. He explained that such bonuses apply only to a select group of senior leaders and that Altman was omitting the actual terms of the offers.
Bosworth confirmed that several OpenAI researchers had joined Meta and hinted that more were on the way. He told new recruits during the meeting, “You didn’t screw up. You made a great decision. Comp is right where it should be.”
At the same meeting, Meta’s Chief Product Officer Chris Cox acknowledged that while Meta AI has a broad reach, one billion monthly users, its depth of engagement lags behind ChatGPT. He said Meta will focus less on workplace productivity tools and more on AI for entertainment, social connection, and lifestyle features. These are areas he believes Meta understands better than its competitors.
Meta declined to comment publicly on both the compensation details and the internal meeting.
