Meta Hires Key OpenAI Researcher for AI Reasoning

Meta Bolsters AI Capabilities with Key OpenAI Hire

Meta has recently recruited Trapit Bansal, a prominent researcher from OpenAI, to contribute to the development of its AI reasoning models. This addition falls under the purview of the company’s newly established AI superintelligence unit, as confirmed by a source with knowledge of the situation.

OpenAI Confirms Departure

Kayla Wood, a spokesperson for OpenAI, verified Bansal’s departure from the organization to TechCrunch. His LinkedIn profile indicates that he concluded his tenure at OpenAI in June.

Bansal’s Contributions at OpenAI

Since joining OpenAI in 2022, Bansal played a pivotal role in initiating the company’s research into reinforcement learning, working closely with co-founder Ilya Sutskever. He is recognized as a fundamental contributor to OpenAI’s inaugural AI reasoning model, known as o1.

Impact on Meta’s AI Lab

The acquisition of Bansal is expected to significantly enhance Meta’s AI superintelligence lab. This lab already includes prominent figures like Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI, and is actively pursuing former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, co-founder of Safe Superintelligence. Bansal’s expertise could be instrumental in developing a cutting-edge AI reasoning model capable of competing with leading technologies such as OpenAI’s o3 and DeepSeek’s R1.

Currently, Meta does not make an AI reasoning model available to the public.

Zuckerberg’s Aggressive Hiring Strategy

Mark Zuckerberg has been actively recruiting talent to expand Meta’s AI team in recent months. Reports suggest he has offered compensation packages valued at $100 million to attract top researchers. The specifics of Bansal’s offer remain undisclosed.

However, Zuckerberg appears to be succeeding in attracting leading AI research professionals.

Influx of Former OpenAI Researchers

According to reports from The Wall Street Journal, three additional former OpenAI researchers – Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai – have also recently joined Meta’s AI superintelligence team. Bansal will be joining them, alongside Jack Rae, a former researcher at Google DeepMind, and Johan Schalkwyk, previously a machine learning leader at Sesame, as noted by Bloomberg.

Acquisition Attempts

Zuckerberg reportedly explored the possibility of acquiring startups with strong AI research capabilities, including Safe Superintelligence (founded by Sutskever), Thinking Machines Labs (led by Mira Murati), and Perplexity. These discussions, however, did not result in any finalized agreements.

OpenAI’s Perspective

During a recent podcast appearance, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that Meta has been attempting to recruit talent from his company. He asserted, however, that “none of our best people have decided to accept those offers.”

Meta’s Response

A Meta spokesperson declined to provide a comment on the matter.

The Importance of AI Reasoning Models

Key Area for Development

AI reasoning models are a crucial focus for Meta’s AI superintelligence team. Over the past year, OpenAI, Google, and DeepSeek have introduced highly effective AI reasoning models that have significantly advanced the capabilities of software.

By enabling AI models to analyze problems before providing solutions, utilizing increased time and computational resources, AI labs have achieved improvements in performance on both benchmarks and real-world applications.

Potential Internal Impact

Meta’s AI superintelligence lab has the potential to become a central group driving innovation across the company’s products, similar to Google’s DeepMind. Meta is also pursuing an ambitious initiative to develop AI agents for business applications, spearheaded by Clara Shih, the former Salesforce CEO of AI.

To create competitive agents, Meta requires the development of advanced AI reasoning models.

The AI Race Continues

With the addition of Bansal and other key researchers, Meta aims to gain a competitive edge in the AI landscape. This pursuit may be challenging, considering OpenAI’s plans to release an open AI reasoning model in the coming weeks, which could further intensify pressure on Meta’s AI offerings.

This article has been updated to include additional details.