Indian origin AI researcher Trapit Bansal has confirmed that he has joined Meta. He is the latest to quit Open AI and join Meta to further the company’s new AI superintelligence unit. Meta has reportedly been poaching several OpenAI employees with bizarre compensations. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was offering close to $100 million (approximately Rs. 835 crore) signing bonuses to get them on board.
Bansal took to social media site X to announce his new appointment at Meta. He wrote, “Thrilled to be joining @Meta! Superintelligence is now in sight.” His appointment has sparked speculations that Bansal is offered close to Rs. 800 crore in compensation. Social media is abuzz with the insane package that Meta is offering to secure talent for furthering his AI efforts.
Who is Indian-origin AI researcher Trapit Bansal?
Trapit Bansal graduated from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur. He holds a Ph.D in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst wherein he specialized in deep learning, meta-learning, and natural language processing (NLP). He currently lives in San Francisco, California. He worked with several big tech companies like Google and Microsoft, before joining OpenAI in 2022. Bansal left OpenAI in June 2025 to join Meta.
What will Trapit Bansal do at Meta?
At Meta, Bansal will support work on AI reasoning models - similar in scope to OpenAI’s o3 or DeepSeek’s R1 - under the company’s new AI superintelligence unit, TechCrunch reports, citing a person familiar with the matter.
The Wall Street Journal reports that three other former OpenAI researchers — Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai — have also joined Meta’s AI superintelligence team in the last few weeks.
In recent months, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly stepped up efforts to expand the company’s AI research group, offering competitive compensation packages to top talent. It even explored acquisitions of AI-focused startups like Perplexity – but those talks didn’t lead to any deals.
Will Bansal really be getting Rs. 800 crore salary?
As for the payout, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth reportedly says that senior leaders have been offered a multi-million dollar pay, but no one is really getting a $100 million “signing bonus.” He clarified that the actual terms of the offer wasn’t a ‘sign-on bonus’. It’s a mix of different things that may include equity and other perks.
Newly appointed Meta employee Beyer also confirmed that he didn’t get a $100 million sign-on bonus and asserted that its fake news.
