Who Is Trapit Bansal? Meet Indian OpenAI Research Genius Hired By Meta; Check His Educational Qualification And Other Details | Economy News
New Delhi: Meta has brought on Trapit Bansal, a highly influential OpenAI researcher, to work on its AI reasoning models under the company’s new AI superintelligence team, according to a report by TechCrunch. Bansal is expected to work with Meta to develop a cutting-edge AI reasoning model that’s competitive with industry-leading technology.
OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wood told TechCrunch that Bansal had left the company. According to Bansal’s LinkedIn page, he left OpenAI in June.
Who is Trapit Bansal? Indian To Join Meta’s AI superintelligence Team
Trapit Bansal has worked at OpenAI since 2022 and has played a pivotal role in launching the company’s reinforcement learning efforts alongside co-founder Ilya Sutskever. He was one of the key contributors to OpenAI’s first AI reasoning model o1.
Bansal is expected to provide a major boost to Meta’s AI superintelligence lab which also includes leaders such as former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. Bansal is expected to assist Meta in developing a cutting-edge AI reasoning model that can compete with industry-leading technology like OpenAI’s o3 or DeepSeek’s R1. There isn’t a public AI reasoning model available from Meta at the moment.
Trapit Bansal’s Educational Qualification
As per his LinkedIn profile, Trapit Bansal holds Master of Science (M.Sc. Integrated), Mathematics and Statistics (2007 – 2012) from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Bansal also attended University of Massachusetts, securing Master of Science – MS, Computer Science degree (2015 – 2019). He also has a Doctor of Philosophy – PhD, Computer Science (2015 – Dec 2021) degree from University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Meta’s AI superintelligence team
Three other former OpenAI researchers Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai have also joined Meta’s AI superintelligence team in recent weeks, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Bansal will join them, alongside former Google DeepMind researcher Jack Rae and former machine learning leader at the startup Sesame, Johan Schalkwyk, Bloomberg said.
Meta’s AI superintelligence lab may develop into a crucial internal team that drives products throughout the company, the way Google’s DeepMind unit does.
The addition of Bansal and other key AI researchers will empower Meta to pull ahead in the AI race, as reported by TechCrunch.
Meta’s AI superintelligence team: Mark Zuckerberg’s hiring spree
Mark Zuckerberg has been on a hiring spree in recent months to bolster Meta’s new AI team, offering top researchers $100 million compensation packages. However, it is not known what Bansal has been offered for joining the deal, as reported by TechCrunch.
