In art, there is always an atelier — a space where masters work on forms that change the world. When a master leaves his atelier, it is never just a transition: it is an act that reflects deep shifts in aesthetics, culture and time. Today, Apple is experiencing precisely such a moment.

Jian Zhang, one of Apple’s leading specialists in artificial intelligence and robotics, is leaving after ten years to join Meta Robotics Studio. At the same time, three other key members of the Foundation Models team have taken positions at OpenAI and Anthropic. On the surface, this looks like a piece of technology news. But in essence, it is a symptom of an era.

Apple, long a symbol of discipline and silence, is becoming a place people leave. This cannot be viewed as a private staffing story. It reflects what is happening in the very architecture of the technological world: a shift of gravity from closed ecosystems to more open, flexible, and philosophically new spaces.
Meta Robotics Studio, where Zhang has moved, is betting on the fusion of AI with the physical world — robotics, autonomous systems, bionic prototypes. OpenAI and Anthropic are focused on foundational models, on the language and cognition of machines. Leaving Apple for such companies is not merely changing an employer; it is choosing a different cultural paradigm. If Apple spent decades building a “walled garden” where form and control were absolute priorities, today researchers are seeking freer domains of exploration — where experiments are not limited by the brand’s aesthetics but become investigations into the nature of intelligence itself.

These shifts point to an essential feature of our time: in AI, vision now matters more than raw technology. Companies compete not merely in interfaces or devices but in their ability to offer a new map of the future. And in this race, people themselves — carriers of intuition, experience and distinctive research signatures — are the true resource. When a master leaves the atelier, they take with them not only skills but also the language in which the art was made. That language cannot simply be reproduced within a company.

For Apple, this presents a dual challenge. On one hand, it remains one of the few technology brands shaping global culture. On the other, its structure is vulnerable to the competition of ideas. If in the past Apple set the rhythm for the world to follow, today it is forced to catch up with a debate unfolding beyond the limits of its ecosystem.

We are witnessing the beginning of a new era in the AI industry — an era where the product itself matters less than the philosophy behind it. Meta Robotics envisions a future in which intelligence becomes embodied. OpenAI and Anthropic see it as dialogue and cognition. Apple, however, remains tied to its legacy of devices, interfaces and aesthetics — a legacy that makes it harder to enter these new conversations freely.

That is why the departure of a handful of people carries weight far greater than their individual career moves. It signals a shift in the global balance of ideas, a sign that the future is no longer the monopoly of a single brand. And in that sense, the question is not only what Apple has lost, but also what others have gained: fresh energy, new perspectives, and the lived experience of working within a company that for decades defined the taste and rhythm of global technological culture.