Already reeling from  the perception that they seriously struggling to develop an AI solution to compete with the likes of Google, Samsung and Microsoft the iPhone maker is now facing the loss of their top executive in charge of artificial intelligence who has been lured to join Meta.

Ruoming Pang, a distinguished engineer and manager in charge of the company’s Apple foundation models team, is departing, according to Bloomberg.

Pang, who joined Apple from Alphabet in 2021, is the latest senior executive to call it quits at Apple.

Observers claim that the sudden departure, is the most significant since the company started working on Apple Intelligence a few years ago.

They claim it underscores the heightened competition for talent in the emerging space.

Meta has also hired Yuanzhi Li, a researcher from OpenAI, and Anton Bakhtin, who worked on Claude at Anthropic PBC, according to other people with knowledge of the matter.

Bloomberg claim that with Pang’s departure, the AFM team will now be run by Zhifeng Chen. In a change from a structure under Pang where most of the engineers reported to him directly, there will be a new organizational layout that includes multiple managers reporting to Chen, who will then have engineers reporting to them.

People close to the team indicate that Chong Wang, Zirui Wang, Chung-Cheng Chiu, and Guoli Yin could be possible managers in the new structure.