Apple Recruits Google AI Experts as It Expands Global AI Team, Opening Secret Zurich Lab

Apple is intensively growing its global artificial intelligence (AI) team by employing a variety of strategies, including recruiting experts from Google and establishing a secretive laboratory in Zurich, as reported by Financial Times.

The tech giant, which has seen its valuation soar to $2.7 trillion, has been on a recruitment drive to bolster its AI and machine learning teams around the world. Since 2018, following the appointment of John Giannandrea as the head of the AI department, Apple has successfully lured at least 36 specialists from Google. The Financial Times discovered this after analyzing hundreds of LinkedIn profiles, job postings, and academic publications.

Most of Apple's AI team operates out of offices in California and Seattle, but the technical group has also set up a new headquarters in Zurich. Professor Luk Van Gool from ETH Zurich noted that Apple's acquisition of two local AI startups—the virtual reality group FaceShift and the image recognition company Fashwell—prompted the company to establish a research laboratory in the city, known as the Vision Lab.

Apple's Zurich team has been involved in researching foundational technology used in OpenAI's chatbot, ChatGPT. They focus on refining AI capabilities that integrate textual and visual data to respond to queries.

Over the past decade, Apple has also acquired about two dozen AI startups, focusing on applications of artificial intelligence in image and video recognition, data processing, search capabilities, and music content management.