Apple Loses More AI Researchers to Meta and Google

Apple has reportedly lost at least four AI researchers recently to its big tech rivals.

These departures include Yinfei Yang, Haoxuan You, Bailin Wang and Zirui Wang, Bloomberg News reported Friday (Jan. 30). The report, citing sources familiar with the matter, said Yang left to found a new company, You and Bailin Wang joined Meta, and Zirui Wang took a job with Google’s DeepMind.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman characterizes the departures as an example of ongoing turbulence within Apple’s AI unit. The company has scrambled to stay on pace with its AI peers, and its decision to hand off some technology to Google hasn’t sat well with staff, the report added.

In addition to the four departures, Bloomberg said Apple executive Stuart Bowers has also left for DeepMind. He had been a senior leader in the company’s abandoned self-driving vehicle project before moving over to revamping Apple’s Siri voice assistant.

The news follows a series of reports last year about executive departures at Apple. The company said in December that Lisa Jackson, vice president for environment, policy and social initiatives, was due to retire in late January of this year, while Kate Adams, general counsel, will retire in late 2026.

Also in December, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that dozens of employees had left Apple for OpenAI and Meta in recent months. Those workers included engineers and designers with expertise in areas such as audio, watch design and robotics.

Apple last week reported earnings for what CEO Tim Cook called “a quarter for the record books,” posting $143.8 billion in quarterly revenue, up 16% year over year.

“But for the banking, payments and digital commerce crowd, the more interesting thread running through Apple’s fiscal 2026 first-quarter earnings call for the period ending Dec. 27 wasn’t just iPhone demand, it was how Cook is positioning Apple Intelligence as a business lever, why Apple picked Google as a key AI partner, and what Apple says it’s doing to keep payments safer,” PYMNTS wrote.

The CEO framed Apple Intelligence less as a standalone product and more as an operating-system-level capability that can increase the value of its entire ecosystem and, by extension, make room to monetize across hardware and services.

Cook focused on early usage and practical features rather than grand “AI platform” rhetoric, stressing that the experience is meant to be “personal” and “private,” integrated into the way customers already interact with the iPhone.

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