Apple Continues To Bleed Talent As Microsoft Snags Up Key Chip Architect

Apple Inc AAPL continues to bleed semiconductor talent to its rivals, with Mike Filippo, a key chip architect, jumping ship to Microsoft Corporation MSFT.

What Happened: Filippo, an Arm Ltd and Intel Corporation INTC veteran, will join Microsoft’s Azure group to work on processors, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.

The key engineer is listed as a “Chief Compute Architect” with Microsoft, according to LinkedIn. Filippo joined Apple in May 2019.

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Why It Matters: This month, Jeff Wilson, the engineer who designed Apple’s M1 processors that power its Mac range of computers, was hired by Intel.

Wilson announced the transition on LinkedIn. He said, “I could not be more thrilled to be back working with the amazing teams there to help create groundbreaking SOCs. Great things are ahead!”

Apple announced surprise stock bonuses ranging from $50,000 to $180,000 to select engineers including those working in silicon design late last month.

The announcement of the stock bonuses comes in the backdrop of a poaching war with Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc FB, which has hired 100 engineers from the Tim Cook-led company, according to a prior report.

The hiring of Filippo is suggestive of the fact that Microsoft is hastening its drive to create its own chips for servers that power Azure cloud-computing servers, noted Bloomberg.

Such a move to in-house chips would affect long-time Azure chip suppliers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices Inc AMD. 

Notably, Filippo’s early experience also includes 8 years at AMD as a CPU designer. He spent 10 years and 5 years with Arm and Intel respectively, according to his LinkedIn Page.

Price Action: On Wednesday, Apple shares closed 0.3% higher at $175.53 in the regular session and fell 0.2% in the after-hours trading. On the same day, Microsoft shares rose 1% to $318.27 in regular trading and fell 0.15% in the after-hours.

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