TechCrunch has reported that Trapit Bansal, a prominent Indian-origin researcher specializing in reinforcement learning, has departed OpenAI to join Meta. Bansal was a highly influential figure at OpenAI, making his move a significant gain for Meta.
In a post shared on the social media platform X this morning, the IIT Kanpur graduate confirmed that he will be joining Meta’s new superintelligence unit, for which Mark Zuckerberg has been on a hiring spree and has poached several influential OpenAI researchers.
Bansal’s departure from OpenAI is particularly significant, especially at a time when CEO Sam Altman has great plans for the future of the firm. Having joined the company in 2022, he was instrumental in the development of o1, OpenAI’s foundational AI reasoning model, working closely with co-founder Ilya Sutskever. His transition comes at a critical juncture, as competitors are pushing the boundaries of AI, with OpenAI’s own o3 and DeepSeek’s R1 achieving new performance benchmarks in reasoning models.
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Meta’s new AI superintelligence unit is not just aiming to compete; it’s building a team designed to potentially outmaneuver the current leaders. The roster already boasts impressive names, including Alexandr Wang, former CEO of Scale AI; Jack Rae, a former researcher from Google DeepMind; and Johan Schalkwyk, a veteran in machine learning. Reports are also circulating that several other former OpenAI researchers have recently found a new home at Meta.
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Trapit Bansal confirmed that he will be joining Meta in an X post this morning. Bansal holds a degree in Mathematics and Statistics from IIT Kanpur, a master’s in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a PhD in Computer Science, also from UMass Amherst.
According to his LinkedIn profile, he has held research internship positions at IISc Bangalore, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. Between January 2022 and June 2025, he worked with OpenAI.
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