Apple "Bribes" Employees to Prevent Moves to OpenAI and Meta, with a Fantastic Value

The competition in Artificial Intelligence (AI) has sparked a fierce scramble for expert talent. In this battle for human resources, Apple is preparing “incentives” for its employees to prevent them from moving to competitors such as Meta and OpenAI.

To retain them, employees working on iPhone projects are being incentivised by Apple with a fantastic value, around $200,000 to $400,000 or equivalent to Rp 3.3 billion to Rp 6.7 billion for the entire period.

However, the bonus of up to Rp 6.7 billion will not be given all at once in cash. Apple is paying it in the form of shares that will be vested gradually over four years.

This scheme requires employees to stay with Apple to receive the full bonus value. If they leave earlier, part of the bonus could be forfeited.

This step is seen as a response to the increasingly tight talent recruitment competition, especially from technology companies aggressively pursuing AI such as OpenAI and Meta.

In several cases, competing companies are even said to offer much higher compensation packages. Therefore, Apple is deemed to need to increase incentives so that its key talents are not easily recruited by competitors.

One name that has garnered much attention is Tang Tan, Apple’s former VP of product design, who now serves as head of hardware at OpenAI. There is also Abidur Chowdhury, the industrial designer behind the iPhone Air, who is said to have left to join an AI startup called Hawk AI.

This wave of employee movement is also evident throughout 2025, when dozens of Apple engineers and designers were reported to have left the company and joined OpenAI or Meta.

Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman even stated that OpenAI has recruited more than 40 former Apple employees to strengthen its hardware team.

Not only to OpenAI, several Apple talents are also said to have joined Meta. Some of them are former design executives, AI researchers, and figures who previously led model development and technology research at Apple.

This situation shows that the competition for talent in the AI and hardware industry is now increasingly fierce.

Although employee movement is actually not new in Silicon Valley, Apple appears to want to curb the risk of losing more key talents.

Apple itself is said to have taken similar steps in 2021 by giving bonuses of around $180,000, though the results at that time did not fully succeed in stemming the employee exodus.