Apple Inc., long the model of stability in Silicon Valley, is suddenly undergoing its biggest personnel shake-up in decades, with senior executives and key engineers both hitting the exits. In just the past week, Apple's heads of artificial intelligence and interface design stepped down. Then the company announced that its general counsel and head of governmental affairs were leaving as well.
Even in the money-soaked world of AI, the hiring efforts of Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg stood out this year as he enticed top machine learning researchers with payments reportedly reaching up to $1 billion to defect from their employers and come work for him instead. The overtures weren't always successful; in one embarrassing case, an individual was offered 10-figures to work at Meta's so-called Superintelligence initiative - but turned it down to stay at Thinking Machines Lab, a venture started by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati.