This appeared in the 1440 Daily Digest. .you may have to sift through some ads but I don’t think you’ll get caught by a paywall.
Ken Ray has put it nicely:
“Yes, that’s the same Bloomberg and the same Mark Gurman who have been saying for most of the past year that Apple cannot get anywhere in AI. So how is this a setback exactly? The way Gurman’s been telling the story to this point, Facebook stealing Apple’s best AI person would be like Apple stealing Facebook’s privacy coordinator.”
Via Mac OS Ken: Trade Avdisor and Tariff Trouble
Even more Executive carousel:
“Apple issued a press release Tuesday, saying the company’s chief operating officer, Jeff Williams, is giving up that title. According to the press release, Williams will continue reporting to Apple CEO Tim Cook, and overseeing Apple’s design team and Apple Watch, alongside the company’s health initiatives.
Apple’s design team will then transition to reporting directly to Cook after Williams retires late in the year. The design team is going to answer to Tim, not a product guy, Cook. Cool.
Apple’s announcement says the company’s senior VP of Operations, Sabi Khan, will take over the COO role as part of a long planned succession. Getting to know him, Apple says Khan has been at Apple for 30 years and joined the executive team as senior vice president of operations in 2019.”
Via: Mac OS Ken: Apple Plays COO Shuffle - MOSK: 07.09.2025
Always in motion is the future (via Yoda (YouTube)). 
I disagree with this statement quite a lot.
A person’s capability and what they achieve at a particular company are not intrinsically linked. There are times when someone’s a bad cultural fit, people get told how a job will be and find it to be completely different when they join, and there are times when a company’s governance limits someone’s ability to reach their potential and/or do their best work.
Based on the information which has come out, working AI at Apple doesn’t seem to have been a walk in the park and I would guess that working in Privacy at Meta/Facebook is probably a thankless task at times.
Both people may be pulling up trees internally, but their efforts are being suppressed by their companies e.g. when Luca Maestri limits ability to buy graphics cards at Apple for AI work.
I’ve worked in jobs at companies where my hands have been tied, it didn’t mean I didn’t give it my all, or play the long game.
Well now that the Metaverse is fully up and running it only makes sense that Meta would now turn to mastering LLMs and AI.
I wonder what the company’s new name will be?
I’d keep Meta, easy to remember and quick to type. Zuckerberg is a high roller and “superintelligence” is just another big bet that could change everything for Meta if he succeeds. Or fails.
I never get bothered by the “shiny employees” leaving. Excellence always speaks for itself. We’ve tried this many times with guys like Mark Papermaster, Chris Lattner leaving Apple and flaming out at Google in a blaze of glory. Some would say John Gianndrea is approaching Papermaster levels of futility at Apple.
I get Corporate culture and the obstacles but when you come in as a high profile hire you basically get what need and 4 years later if you haven’t delivered it’s time to move on. Meta is paying millions a year and i’m pretty sure Apple was like “bye”
Ken Ray is known for his style, and I like it how he is able to report on things while commenting on it at the same time in an intelligent, funny, and sometimes smirky and at times maybe even sarcastic manner. If not, I would not have been a listener for more than a decade (not every episode, but most of them). Maybe, this is not for everybody.
You can understand his statement the way you did. I get that and am with you concerning the potential judgment of Ruoming Pang. I have no idea how capable he is or not. I understood it differently (at least to some degree) though. Ken Ray is referring to the ongoing moniker by Gurman about Apple having “setbacks” with regard to AI. Setback after setback. So, if everything has been so bad with Apple and their AI models, why is it a setback when Facebook is stealing the person in charge of AI models at Apple? So, has everything been that bad? If so, will it be more bad if the person in charge has left? Or is it more like Facebook stealing Apple’s best AI person being like Apple potentially stealing Facebook’s privacy coordinator? I am seeing his (to some degree sarcastic) statement more as criticism of Gurman and his ongoing Apple AI “bashing” and not limited to Ruoming Pang (if at all). Maybe, I am too positive?
Be it as it may, I do not want to mislead this topic too much (and I am struggling with English right now)… 
AFAIK Mark Gurman’s entire career to date as been reporting on Apple. And “Apple” may be the most successful Clickbait word in history. So almost anything that can be said about Apple is going to get people’s attention.
I don’t see Apple’s lack of progress in AI as due to “setbacks”, etc. Their marketing department has been banging the private and secure drum for years, and now Apple is trying to make on-device/Private Cloud Compute equal to or better than the competition. That makes their job much harder, especially after getting a late start.
The AI most people are using on their phones today is not running on-device. IMO, the longer that continues the less privacy and security may be a major selling point.
Sorry, I should have acknowledged that I understood the intent, I just think that it’s far too reductive to pin a company’s performance on one person.
I don’t know Ken Ray so you obviously have more context than I do.
Continuing the discussion from Top Executive Poached from Apple:
I understand that he is now working on Mojo, a language that takes an
“interesting” approach — its syntax is modeled after Python, but it’s designed
from the ground up to be extremely fast.
The project still seems to be in its early stages or “incubator” phase. It’s led
by Chris Lattner and appears to have attracted genuine interest. I don’t have any
inside knowledge, but it seems that, in certain circles at least, he’s still
regarded as someone with substantial contributions ahead of him.