Apple’s Top LLM Researcher Quits; MLX Team ‘Threatened’ to Leave: Report

Tom Gunter, one of Apple’s most senior researchers, left the company last week, Bloomberg reported on June 30. Gunter worked at the company for eight years, and the report added that his colleagues see him as “difficult to replace, given his unique skillset”. 

Furthermore, the company was also reported to have ‘nearly lost’ the team behind MLX, an open-source machine learning framework designed for Apple’s in-house silicon hardware. However, they made counteroffers after the engineers “threatened” to leave, and eventually retained them. 

“Given how crucial it is, the team should have already been scaled up fivefold. Instead, it seems to be neglected by management,” said Ronald Mannak, creator of Pico, a suite of LLM apps and tools for iOS and macOS,  which is built on MLX. 

The development comes at a time when Apple is considering options to utilise third-party AI models for a new version of Siri, its virtual assistant. 

According to the report, members have indicated internally that they're unhappy with Apple's exploration of third-party options, which is creating a perception that they're responsible for the company’s AI shortcomings. These employees also said that they could leave for ‘multimillion-dollar packages’ being offered by companies like Meta and OpenAI. 

Moreover, Bloomberg noted that Apple often pays its engineers half, or even less, than what's offered in the open market. 

One of the significant troubles the company has been facing is the delay of an upgraded version of Siri, which was announced in 2024. It is delayed until 2026, with reports highlighting that Apple struggled to mitigate various bugs and engineering problems within Siri. 

Recently, it was reported that Apple is interested in acquiring Perplexity AI, which is valued at $14 billion. Besides, Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, revealed that Apple has had discussions with Perplexity to integrate AI-enabled search services on Safari. 

The company is exploring various AI labs, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, to integrate AI search features into Safari. 

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has announced that the company is in talks with Apple to integrate Gemini into Apple Intelligence this year. 

Meanwhile, Apple CEO Tim Cook, in an interaction with Pichai, said that ‘more third-party AI models’ would ship to Apple Intelligence this year.