Apple suffered a major blow in the AI race after the announcement that engineer Key Yang, head of the project developing an advanced version of its voice assistant “Siri,” is leaving to join rival company Meta.
Yang led the “Answers, Knowledge & Information” team responsible for creating a version of Siri capable of searching the internet and responding conversationally like ChatGPT—intended to compete with OpenAI, Google’s Gemini, and Perplexity. His departure comes just months before the planned launch of the new version.
The year 2025 has seen multiple resignations within Apple’s “Foundation Models” team, including its founder Ruming Pang, who also joined Meta.
