Andrew Orr
A senior researcher's exit and a near-mutiny among Apple Intelligence engineers expose Apple's struggle to stay competitive in the AI arms race.
Apple is facing mounting internal fractures over its AI strategy, losing one of its top researchers while scrambling to keep key teams on board. It increasingly looks like a crisis of confidence in Cupertino.
Tom Gunter, one of Apple's most senior large language model researchers, has left the company after eight years. Colleagues say his deep expertise is tough to replace, especially as rivals like Meta and OpenAI throw around multimillion-dollar pay packages to poach talent.
The news comes in a Monday report from Bloomberg that also alleges Apple plans to integrate rival AI models more deeply into Siri.
Apple narrowly averts MLX team exodus
Apple is no longer the most desirable shop in town for machine learning. If it can't match competitors' salaries, Apple risks losing valuable talent.
Additionally, the company must provide them with compelling and meaningful projects. Otherwise, it risks its machine learning team becoming hollowed out.
Apple nearly lost the entire team behind MLX, its open-source machine learning framework optimized for Apple Silicon. Those engineers reportedly threatened to quit, forcing the company to scramble with counteroffers to keep them.
The fact that it came to that brink suggests morale is shaky and confidence in leadership is eroding.
MLX isn't a throwaway side project, it's essential for Apple's strategy to get cutting-edge AI running efficiently on its chips. Losing that team would have been a disaster.
Apple averted catastrophe this time. But paying people to stay isn't the same as keeping them motivated and aligned with the company's mission.
Apple's AI strategy shows signs of drift
These staffing dramas are a symptom of a deeper strategic confusion. Apple is debating whether to keep investing in its own foundation models or outsource core AI features like Siri to Anthropic or OpenAI.
Internally, executives reportedly see their own models as inferior. That kind of language does not inspire confidence in the teams building them.
Siri has lagged competitors for years. Outsourcing to Anthropic or OpenAI might be the only way to catch up quickly, even if it undermines Apple's reputation for vertical integration.
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Wesley Hilliard
Marko Zivkovic
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
3 Comments
Nice reporting. You've captured well the conundrum Apple is facing without Chicken Little hysterics. It's behind in AI development and I don't doubt that its existing internal product is inferior to what's available from third parties. So... do you wait for your internal product to get up to speed or do you seek a better, faster third party solution, thus risking mutiny by the AI team you have in place? I can't really criticize Apple's current team because I don't know what kind of sh-tshow it might have inherited.
The narrative does not address the root cause for why Apple is where it is at the moment. Siri was groundbreaking when it launched and it seems like some of the execs at Apple just dont get it. My money is on Craig being one of them given how the software side has been lagging behind the hardware side in evolution.
If there is truly a lack of confidence across the rank and file of talent within Apple, that is not a good sign at all and points to leadership deficiencies. I say that with a grain of salt because we aren't privy to what is really happening internally at Apple. I've said it before but I will say it again, the media and political scrutiny that's being piled on Apple and its leadership team over the past year or so cannot be brushed aside out of hand.
Nobody can allocate more that 100% of their attention at any time. If Apple or Tim Cook is having to fend off another tantrum occurring in the White House or percolating in the cesspool known as X, he's not doing something proactive to advance Apple's position with its stakeholders, including customers. I suspect that a large percentage of Apple's leadership team's bandwidth is being consumed by defensive battles. That's a highly corrosive position to be in and something has to give and some things are going too break. The last thing you want to be dented, or much worse broken, is confidence.
The signs are there, at least in my mind, that the Apple "machine" is not running at full speed or in the capacity that it is capable of. I personally feel that this year's WWDC was a little "light" both in terms of what was shown and what was projected on the roadmap. Waving the white flag on some aspects of Apple Intelligence and Siri delivery expectations took a little bit of air out of internal and external developer's confidence. The UI updates to the major platforms are certainly appreciated, but kind of expected within the scope of incremental improvements and refreshes. If renaming everything around the year, i.e., "26" was considered a BF deal, that is really grasping at straws to find anything significant to show. I don't think I got a single text with "Woo hoo, the next version of iOS will be iOS 26, let's go party."
All I'm saying is that if Apple is tripping over its own feet trying to play offense and defense at the same time they need to bring in someone to share the burden and allow the most influential leaders to stay focused on keeping the teams happy and motivated to perform at their very best, while enjoying every minute of it, of course.