Meta Snaps Up Executive Behind Apple’s ChatGPT-Style Search
Ke Yang exits Apple weeks after taking charge of its Answers Knowledge and Information team as Meta accelerates senior hiring in AI, report says
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Meta Platforms has hired Ke Yang, the Apple executive recently appointed to run a ChatGPT-style web search initiative inside the iPhone maker, Bloomberg reported, marking another senior defection in the race for AI talent.
Yang was tapped only weeks ago to lead Apple’s “Answers, Knowledge and Information” group, or AKI, a team building a web-aware experience designed to bolster Siri with more conversational, retrieval-augmented responses, the Bloomberg report said.
The group is at the heart of Apple’s plan to “explore a number of in-house AI services and with the goal of creating a new ChatGPT-like search experience.”
Yang reported to Apple’s AI chief John Giannandrea. With Yang’s exit, oversight of AKI will shift to Benoit Dupin, one of Giannandrea’s deputies.
This isn’t the first big loss for Apple’s AI division. In recent months, several senior researchers, including Jian Zhang (lead AI researcher for robotics), Ruoming Pang (AI foundation models lead who was offered a $200 million pay package), and Frank Chu (AI infrastructure head), have all left Apple to join Meta’s Superintelligence Labs, a division focused on advanced AI which has become a magnet for top tech talent.
Meta has been on a poaching spree. In addition to Apple’s former researchers, it recently recruited Thinking Machines co-founder Andrew Tulloch, along with AI experts Mark Lee and Tom Gunter. The company appears to be gathering talent wherever it can find it—especially from Apple.
There is no external indication that these leadership changes or departures have affected Apple’s AI efforts or release windows. The revamped LLM-backed Siri is still expected to arrive in early 2026 alongside a new Apple Home product.
Meanwhile, the competitive backdrop remains crowded. Microsoft has integrated OpenAI models across Bing, Windows and Office, Amazon has backed Anthropic while pursuing a multi-model approach, and Google is embedding Gemini across Search, Cloud and Android.
