Apple is facing its most severe talent crisis in decades as a wave of departures reshapes the company’s leadership structure and threatens its competitive position in artificial intelligence. The crisis runs deeper than executive departures; several dozen engineers have departed the company for OpenAI and Meta, creating a talent exodus at iPhone maker. The scale of the exodus is unprecedented. Alan Dye, who led Apple’s user interface design for a decade, left for Meta this week to become chief design officer. John Giannandrea, senior vice president for Machine Learning and AI Strategy, announced his retirement December 1st after what insiders describe as a failed tenure marked by AI development struggles. Design director Billy Sorrentino followed Dye to Meta, while dozens of engineers with expertise in audio, watch design, and robotics have made similar moves.Beyond these headline departures, Apple’s C-suite is experiencing a broader shake-up. Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams—once considered CEO Tim Cook’s likely successor—retired in July after 27 years. CFO Luca Maestri stepped back from his role last year. General Counsel Kate Adams and environment policy chief Lisa Jackson both announced 2026 retirements. The Wall Street Journal notes this represents Apple’s most extensive executive overhaul since Steve Jobs’ death in 2011.
Why Apple’s AI division hit hardest
The artificial intelligence team has sustained the most damaging losses. Dozens of engineers and designers have defected to competitors in recent months, according to WSJ’s analysis of LinkedIn profiles. OpenAI alone recruited more than 40 Apple hardware engineers in a single month, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported, many joining Jony Ive’s secretive AI device venture backed by a $6.5 billion OpenAI investment.Then, Ruoming Pang, who managed Apple’s foundation models team of approximately 100 employees, departed for Meta in July. His team was responsible for developing the large language models powering Apple Intelligence, Genmoji, and other AI features across iPhones and Macs. Meta reportedly offered Pang a compensation package worth tens of millions annually.Jian Zhang, who spent a decade at Apple leading AI research for robotics, left for Meta’s Robotics Studio in September. His departure came as Apple was developing tabletop robots and robotic arms for retail stores, according to industry reports. Then in October, Ke Yang—just weeks after being appointed to lead Apple’s ChatGPT-style AI search initiative—also jumped to Meta. Yang had been tasked with making Siri competitive with conversational AI assistants, a critical project now in disarray.The timing couldn’t be worse. Apple announced in June 2024 that it would deliver a dramatically improved Siri, but postponed the entire overhaul to March 2026 after the features failed to meet quality standards. The WSJ reports Apple is now testing Google’s Gemini chatbot to power Siri—a tacit admission that its internal AI development has stalled. This strategic uncertainty has demoralized remaining employees, with nearly a dozen members of the Foundation Models team departing in 2025 alone.What’s driving talent away isn’t just money, though competitors are offering staggering sums. Multiple sources tell Bloomberg that frustration with Apple’s conservative, bureaucratic approach to AI development has pushed researchers toward companies offering faster innovation cycles. The company’s exploration of partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic—rather than betting on in-house capabilities—has signaled to employees that leadership lacks confidence in their work.
The meta factor
Meta’s aggressive recruitment represents a calculated long-term strategy. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has framed the Dye hire as part of a broader vision where AI-powered glasses and devices fundamentally change human-computer interaction. The company created a new design studio specifically for Dye, who will report directly to CTO Andrew Bosworth and lead hardware, software, and AI integration across Meta’s interfaces.But Dye’s departure reveals something unexpected: many Apple employees are celebrating. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, citing multiple sources within Apple, reported that designers are “giddy” about Dye leaving. “People had given up hope that Dye would ever get squeezed out,” Gruber wrote, “and no one expected that he’d just up and leave on his own.”The reaction stems from widespread dissatisfaction with Dye’s Liquid Glass design system, which prioritized visual aesthetics over usability. Apple was forced to add a “clear/tinted” preference setting in recent OS releases after users complained they couldn’t read text against translucent backgrounds—a rare admission that a major design initiative had failed. Sources describe Dye as having “no taste” and lacking fundamental understanding of user interface principles, with one designer telling Gruber: “I swear I had conversations where I mentioned ‘key window’ and no one knew what I meant.,Apple replaced Dye with Stephen Lemay, a 26-year veteran who has contributed to every major Apple interface since 1999, including the original iPhone. Unlike Dye—who came from fashion branding at Kate Spade and ad agency Ogilvy—Lemay is a career interaction designer known for attention to detail and craftsmanship. “I don’t think there was a better choice than Lemay,” one source told Gruber.
Succession planning accelerates under Cook
The talent crisis coincides with intensifying succession planning for Cook, who turned 65 in November and has led Apple since 2011. The Financial Times reported that Apple’s board expects Cook to step down between late January and June 2026, though Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman disputes that timeline as premature. Both publications agree that hardware chief John Ternus has emerged as the leading internal candidate.The exodus raises questions about whether Apple’s next CEO will inherit a weakened company. Under Cook’s leadership, Apple’s market capitalization grew from $350 billion to $4 trillion. But the company now faces existential challenges in AI—the defining technology of the decade—while competitors raid its talent pool and morale problems persist across critical divisions.OpenAI’s role in the departures extends beyond direct recruitment. The company’s $6.5 billion investment in Jony Ive’s design firm LoveFrom has created an alternative destination for frustrated Apple designers. Ive’s studio was already heavily staffed with ex-Apple employees, and the new hardware arm of OpenAI has been “poaching left and right” from Apple’s hardware engineering group, according to Gurman’s Power On newsletter.The question now is whether Apple can reverse the trend. The company has brought in outside talent—hiring Amar Subramanya, who helped oversee Google’s Gemini chatbot before a brief stint at Microsoft, as vice president of AI—but recovery will require more than individual replacements. It demands addressing the systemic issues driving talent away: uncompetitive compensation, bureaucratic development processes, and strategic confusion about AI’s future at Apple.For Meta and OpenAI, Apple’s crisis represents opportunity. By assembling teams of experienced researchers and executives, they’re positioning themselves to challenge Apple’s dominance in consumer technology.
