Having worked at Apple for nearly three decades, Williams has played a significant role in introducing the iPod and iPhone programs, leading the development of the Apple Watch, and overseeing the design team,

Mr. Williams was long considered a leading candidate to replace Tim Cook as the company’s next chief executive.

Apple Inc. Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams is retiring as the company’s longtime No. 2, marking a major changing of the guard at an already tumultuous time for the iPhone maker.

Apple Inc.’s top executive in charge of artificial intelligence models is leaving for Meta Platforms Inc., another setback in the iPhone maker’s struggling AI efforts.

Bloomberg reports that Mark Zuckerberg’s latest high-priced AI hire is Apple’s foundation AI model leader, Ruoming Pang, based on an offer worth “tens of millions of dollars per year,” plus Yuanzhi Li from OpenAI and Anton Bakhtin from Anthropic.

Ruoming Pang previously ran Apple's in-house team that trained the AI foundation models that underpin Apple Intelligence and other on-device AI features.