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Head of Apple's AI Search Project Leaves to Join Meta
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ChatGPT (OpenAI) is valued at 500 billion
Meta is worth almost 2 trillion
Neither is going to be purchased.
Perplexity which is valued at around 20 billion however is an intriguing proposition.
While money is a big factor for most people, my guess is that they were already being paid well and an increase at Meta, while good, won’t be life altering for most.
I assume that when you’re at that level you really want to be in control and build something great. And maybe at Apple that’s not really possible if their hands are tied by…something. Maybe Apple’s privacy policies makes their work more difficult. Or Apple’s secretive corporate culture hinders collaboration. Or they don’t like being micromanaged. Who knows, it something isn’t right at Apple.
It’s more like they are discovering that the work environment at Apple isn’t conducive to what they want to achieve.
Every company has turnover even at leadership levels. You're just likely focused on Apple only.
That might just lead to key Perplexity employees leaving to greener pastures.
When people are leaving Apple to work for Zuck, that really says it all.
This is not necessarily about what Apple is doing. This is business strategy 101, if you have the money to do it, which META does.
You spend that money to prevent your adversary from having something they need.
Sometimes it talent and sometimes its materials or even supply chain logistics.
For META to spend two million a year to prevent Apple from having talent that could translate into hundreds of millions for Apple is an easy two million for META to spend.
AI is in a bubble. It's not healthy. The sooner the bubble bursts, the better. Get some consolidation.
^ This. Meta is also poaching heavily from OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither of these companies have Mark Gurman covering them extensively and a media ecosystem solely based on the tiniest movements from one single company like Apple. In five years, we're going to find out that Meta grossly overspent for talent and the ROI wasn't nearly what they expected.
Well, when the worker bee has an idea and the senior says "No" we are not going to do that, or "We don't have the funds to do that". Senior execs rarely have good ideas, but often screw up things when exercising their power.
For those interested, Apple regularly updates about the machine learning work their scientists are doing: https://machinelearning.apple.com/
Apple includes tons of "AI" (machine learning) features in their software. Most of it is behind the scenes so people don't even know that it's happening. There might be an "AI" bubble but the methods and tools are here to stay.
Meta ia a morally bankrupt company. Imo any employee who leaves Apple to join that awful company never belonged at Apple in the first place. Good riddance.
I love all the arm-chair recruiters and hiring managers on these threads. Do you REALLY THINK these people being poached are being hired because they are stupid?...or that they've repeatedly failed at Apple?...or that they have no vision?...or they have no experience/skills/expertise? Seriously. They are being hired because they've survived probably 5 rounds of interviews! They're being offered a boatload of money and stock, therefore, the hiring company is going to be super selective on who they hire.
