Apple's Love for 'Googlers'... At Least 36 Hired Since 2018

On the 30th (local time), major foreign media reported that Apple is accelerating its acquisition of AI technology by recruiting a large number of artificial intelligence (AI) experts from companies like Google and establishing a research center in Zurich.

Analysis of LinkedIn profiles, job postings, and research papers revealed that Apple has conducted large-scale hiring in recent years to expand its AI and machine learning teams.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

In particular, after John Giannandrea, a former Google executive, was appointed as Apple's head of AI in 2018, Apple recruited at least 36 experts from Google. In addition, employees from big tech companies such as Amazon, Microsoft (MS), Netflix, and Meta have also moved to Apple.

Currently, Apple's top AI team is composed of former key Google personnel, including Giannandrea. Sammy Benjio, Senior Director of AI and Machine Learning Research, is a former AI scientist at Google. Luo Ming Fang, who leads the 'Foundation Model' team researching large language models (LLM), previously led AI voice recognition research at Google. Additionally, Ian Goodfellow was hired from Google as an AI and machine learning executive but later returned to Google DeepMind after protesting Apple's offline work policy.

Furthermore, a research paper published in March lists six former Google employees hired by Apple in the past two years as authors. The paper discusses the development of an AI model product family called 'MM1,' which generates responses using text and visual inputs.

Moreover, over the past decade, Apple has acquired about 20 startups applying AI inference to image and video recognition, data processing, search functions, and content curation. Most of the founders of these companies are currently working at Apple.

While most of Apple's AI team works in offices in California and Seattle, the company has also established an outpost in Zurich. Professor Luke Van Gool of ETH Zurich stated that Apple set up a 'Vision Lab' research center in Zurich after acquiring two local AI startups: virtual reality (VR) company FaceShift and image recognition company FacioWell.

Apple has also conducted generative AI-related hiring at its two Zurich research centers. Employees at Apple's Zurich labs are reportedly conducting research on chatbot technologies similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT.