Apple Loses Fourth AI Researcher to Meta, AI Strategy Faces Setbacks

United States President Donald Trump has indicated that India may face tariffs ranging from 20% to 25%. However, he emphasized that the final tax rate has not yet been determined, as negotiations between the two countries are still ongoing ahead of the August 1 deadline. "I think so," Trump responded when asked if the tariffs on India could reach this level. "India has always been a good friend, but India's tariffs are basically higher than almost all other countries," Trump said during his return to Washington from a five-day visit to Scotland. "This approach is not going to work."

Apple Inc. has lost its fourth AI researcher in a month, who has joined Meta Platforms Inc., indicating that the iPhone maker's AI strategy has once again encountered setbacks. A key researcher in the field of multimodal AI, Bowen Zhang, left Apple on Friday and will join Meta's newly established super-intelligence team. Zhang was a member of Apple's Foundation Model Team (AFM), which builds the core technology behind Apple's AI platform. Previously, Meta had lured the team's leader, Ruoming Pang, with a compensation package exceeding 200 million dollars. Two other researchers, Tom Gunter and Mark Lee, have also recently joined Meta. The AFM team consists of dozens of engineers and researchers based in Cupertino, California, and New York.

Anthropic, a competitor of OpenAI, is in discussions for a new round of funding between 3 billion and 5 billion dollars, led by Iconiq Capital. This would value the AI startup at 170 billion dollars. Anthropic has already raised tens of billions of dollars, with its valuation rapidly increasing, reflecting investors' eagerness to enter the fastest-growing AI companies. In March, Anthropic raised 350 million dollars in a funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, valuing the company at 61.5 billion dollars. Earlier this week, it was reported that Anthropic's valuation was close to 150 billion dollars after discussions with several Middle Eastern investors.