Trapit Bansal, an IIT-Kanpur alumnus and former OpenAI researcher, has officially joined Meta's newly established Superintelligence Labs (MSL). Bansal’s hiring is part of Meta’s aggressive push to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) and rival industry giants like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic. As part of his new role, Bansal will bring his expertise in deep learning, meta-learning, and natural language processing to help Meta advance in the AGI race.
Bansal’s career journey has been marked by significant contributions to AI and machine learning. After starting his career in 2012 with Accenture, Bansal went on to conduct extensive research at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and interned at leading tech companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI. His most notable achievement came during his tenure at OpenAI, where he co-created the organization's first AI reasoning model, o1, which laid the foundation for the internal reasoning abilities behind ChatGPT.
Meta’s Superintelligence Labs, led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, is dedicated to developing AGI, and Bansal’s expertise is expected to play a key role in the development of next-generation large language models (LLMs). Insiders believe that his knowledge of systems that can learn, reason, and plan will accelerate Meta's AI capabilities, potentially competing with OpenAI’s o3 and DeepMind’s R1 models.
Although details of Bansal’s compensation package remain unconfirmed, reports suggest that Meta is offering exceptional pay packages, with stock-based compensation and significant compute access. Some sources speculate that Bansal’s signing bonus could be as high as Rs 800 crore, reflecting Meta’s commitment to securing top-tier AI talent.
Bansal’s hiring follows a broader trend of Meta aggressively recruiting AI researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind, offering incentives that have sparked tensions within the AI community. While Meta’s spokesperson has downplayed claims of exaggerated salaries, insiders view this as part of Meta's strategy to fast-track AGI development and cement its position as a leader in AI research. With the absence of a publicly available AI reasoning model at Meta, Bansal’s appointment is seen as a pivotal moment that could help the company close this gap and potentially rival the capabilities of other leading AI firms.
