Apple vs OpenAI talent war
Apple and OpenAI are deep in a talent war: Apple is offering rare out‑of‑cycle retention bonuses reportedly up to ₹5 crore and salaries as high as ₹9 crore for AI/hardware engineers, while Apple also plans to open Siri to third‑party AI assistants and recently hired an ex‑Google AI product exec. These moves signal big demand for hands‑on AI and systems expertise. (trak.in)(startupnews.fyi)(enterpriseai.economictimes.indiatimes.com)
Apple granted out‑of‑cycle restricted stock units worth roughly $200,000–$400,000 to many members of its iPhone Product Design team, with those RSUs set to vest over four years. (bloomberg.com) (bloomberg.com) Bloomberg reports the move targets a wave of departures to AI startups after OpenAI recruited former Apple design chief Jony Ive and “several dozen” ex‑Apple engineers into its hardware efforts. (bloomberg.com) (bloomberg.com) That same Bloomberg piece says some rival offers have included roughly $1 million in stock annually for individual Apple engineers, underlining why Apple chose stock‑based retention over immediate pay raises. (bloomberg.com) (bloomberg.com) Apple is planning to open Siri to outside AI assistants in an iOS 27 update, building an Extensions system that would let App Store chatbot apps (for example Google Gemini or Anthropic’s Claude) handle Siri queries directly. (bloomberg.com) (bloomberg.com) The Siri changes are separate from Apple’s underlying Gemini work and are structured to let Apple earn from third‑party AI subscriptions routed through the App Store. (bloomberg.com) (bloomberg.com) Apple has hired Lilian Rincon, a former Google vice president, as vice president of product marketing for artificial intelligence to lead product marketing and product management for Apple Intelligence and Siri, a role that reports to Greg Joswiak. (reuters.com) (ca.finance.yahoo.com) Reporting links the retention RSUs, the Siri extensions plan, and Rincon’s hire as coordinated moves to defend consumer device expertise while shifting Siri toward an app‑extension model that integrates multiple external AI services. (bloomberg.com) (bloomberg.com)
