OpenAI's high-profile IITian employee quits, to join Meta: Who is Indian-origin researcher Trapit Bansal?

OpenAI has lost another key AI talent as Trapit Bansal, an Indian-origin scientist, departs to join Meta. Bansal, who previously contributed to OpenAI's reinforcement learning research and the development of its reasoning model, o1, will potentially work within Meta's newly formed Superintelligence Labs. This follows Lucas Beyer's recent move to Meta's superintelligence team.

OpenAI looses on another high-stakes AI talent, Indian-origin researcher Trapit Bansal has exited OpenAI to join Meta. Bansal, an alumnus of IIT Kanpur and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore, had been with OpenAI since 2022. During his time at the San Francisco-based company, he played a key role in laying the groundwork for its reinforcement learning research, working alongside co-founder Ilya Sutskever. He also contributed significantly to the development of OpenAI’s first reasoning model, o1, according to a statement he shared on X (formerly Twitter).Before joining OpenAI full-time, Bansal completed research internships at tech giants Microsoft and Google. His academic background includes a Master of Science in Mathematics and Statistics from IIT Kanpur.In his recent X post announcing the move, Bansal wrote: “Thrilled to be joining @Meta! Superintelligence is now in sight.”

While his exact role remains undisclosed, his post suggests he may work within Meta's newly formed Superintelligence Labs. On Monday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL) in an internal company memo. The group will oversee the company’s advanced AI research and will be led by Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. Former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman will co-lead the unit. According to Bloomberg, Zuckerberg referred to Wang as “the most impressive founder of his generation.”Recently, OpenAI’s top researcher Lucas Beyer also moved to join Meta's superintelligence team.Also read | Ex-OpenAI researcher who’s joining Mark Zuckerberg's SuperIntelligence team says Sam Altman played everyone

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