(Bloomberg) — Meta Platforms Inc. has made unusually high compensation offers to new members of its “superintelligence” team — including a more than $200 million package for a former Apple Inc. distinguished engineer.
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Meta hired Ruoming Pang, who ran Apple’s AI models team, with a pay package in the hundreds of millions over a several-year period, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who declined to be named discussing unannounced compensation details. Apple didn’t try to match the offer, as it far exceeds pay at the company for leaders other than Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook.
That pay package is in line with other major hires for Meta’s new superintelligence team focused on building AI systems that can complete tasks as well as or better than humans, the people said. The team now includes former GitHub chief Nat Friedman and AI startup founder Daniel Gross. Meta tapped Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang as its chief AI officer by taking a 49% stake in his firm worth $14.3 billion.
Menlo Park, California-based Meta declined to comment. Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment.
From a pure numbers standpoint, the superintelligence group has some of the highest compensation of any corporate job, including CEO roles at the world’s major banks. But much of the money is tied up in performance targets and unlocked during years of loyalty, meaning it might not all be received if employees leave early or if the stock doesn’t perform well.
The compensation packages for hires to Meta superintelligence labs, or MSL, are comprised of a base salary, a signing bonus and Meta shares, with the stock as the weightiest part of the package. The salary and bonus to join are often significant cash payments. In cases where a recruit would have to walk away from significant startup equity to join Meta, the signing bonus may be higher to account for that lost opportunity, the people said.
For the stock portion, Meta tends to put in its contracts that the payouts are tied to specific metrics such as Meta’s stock growing by at least a certain percentage in a given year, the people said. In many cases, the new hires are agreeing to join on contracts that exceed a typical four-year vesting schedule for stock, they added.
