Apple is spiriting away dozens of Google’s artificial intelligence experts to a secretive Swiss laboratory, according to a new report.
The Financial Times, citing a review of LinkedIn profiles of Apple’s AI team, reports that 36 Apple AI employees used to work for Google parent Alphabet by far the most common denominator company and more than the number of former Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta employees combined.
The FT reports that Apple has built a “Vision Lab” in Zurich where it has been advertising jobs.
Despite copyright, political misinformation, and environmental concerns, the AI craze is all-consuming in the world of tech. Even as the rest of the sector is dealing with rolling layoffs and investment pullbacks, AI workers have been snagging $1 million job offers as companies compete to get the best talent. Google says that it expects to spend more than $100 billion on the technology in the years to come.
Although Apple is in discussions with both OpenAI and Google to use either ChatGPT or Gemini to power some of its smartphones’ features, the iPhone producer has also been quietly hoovering up more AI startups than anyone as it seeks to develop its own generative AI products.
But while the likes of Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, and other companies are riding AI hype to record stock heights, Apple has played it significantly cooler on the publicity front. What it has up its sleeve has been largely mysterious, though in February CEO Tim Cook did tease that something big is coming.
“Our M.O., if you will, has always been to do work and then talk about work and not to get out in front of ourselves,” Cook said on an earnings call. “And so, we’re going to hold that to this as well. But we’ve got some things that we are incredibly excited about that we’ll be talking about later this year.”