Meet Trapit Bansal, Meta's new AI superintelligence team hire - Is Meta poaching top talent from OpenAI?
Meta has poached Trapit Bansal, a key AI researcher from OpenAI who contributed significantly to their early AI reasoning and reinforcement learning efforts. Bansal's move to Meta's new AI superintelligence team underscores the intense competition for AI talent. This team aims to develop next-generation AI reasoning models, rivaling those of OpenAI and Google.
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Ex-OpenAI Researcher Trapit Bansal Joins Meta
A Key Figure in OpenAI's Reasoning Work
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Mark Zuckerberg's AI Hiring Spree
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Meta has made another bold move in the AI talent wars by hiring Trapit Bansal , an AI researcher who played a pivotal role in shaping OpenAI 's early efforts in AI reasoning and reinforcement learning, according to a report by TechCrunch.Bansal, who joined OpenAI in 2022, is now among the most publicly visible names to leave the firm and join Meta's brand-new AI superintelligence team , an initiative that's fast attracting all the top minds in the field of AI, as per the report.OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wood confirmed the news to TechCrunch that Bansal had departed OpenAI, while even Bansal's LinkedIn page mentions that he has left OpenAI in June this year, according to the TechCrunch report.ALSO READ: After Canada, now US: College graduates face the toughest job market in decades – what's gone wrong? During his time at OpenAI, Bansal worked closely with co-founder Ilya Sutskever and played an instrumental role in the development of the company's foundational AI reasoning model, o1, as reported by TechCrunch.The growing interest in AI reasoning models , especially as Meta's competitors like OpenAI's o3 and DeepSeek's R1 hit new performance milestones, makes Bansal's move even more impactful, according to the report.ALSO READ: Karoline Leavitt says no enriched uranium was removed from Iranian nuclear sites prior to US attacks Bansal brings his expertise to an impressive team at Meta's AI superintelligence lab, which includes former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, ex-Google DeepMind researcher Jack Rae, and machine learning veteran Johan Schalkwyk, as per the report. Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal reported that several other former OpenAI researchers, Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai, have recently joined Meta as well.The mission of the lab is to develop next-gen AI reasoning models that may match or exceed OpenAI and Google, however, Meta has not yet put out a public AI reasoning model, as reported by TechCrunch.ALSO READ: Last chance to claim your Fortnite refund – Act fast or risk missing out on free cash Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also been making compensation deals in the $100 million range to lure top AI talent to build his new AI team, as reported by TechCrunch. However, it is not known what Bansal was offered to join in this deal, as reported by TechCrunch.Zuckerberg has also reportedly tried to acquire startups with heavy-hitting AI research labs, like Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence, Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Labs, and Perplexity, to further fill out its new AI unit, but those talks never progressed to a final stage, according to the report.During a recent podcast, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman asserted that Meta has been trying to poach his startup's top talent, but highlighted that 'none of our best people have decided to take him up on that,' quoted TechCrunch.He's an AI researcher who helped OpenAI develop its first major reasoning model and worked closely with Ilya Sutskever.It's a newly formed unit aimed at developing advanced AI reasoning models, similar to those at OpenAI and Google.
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