Meta has hired former OpenAI researcher Trapit Bansal to bolster its AI superintelligence division, marking a significant talent win in the race to develop cutting-edge AI reasoning models. Bansal, who departed OpenAI in June, played a foundational role in the development of reinforcement learning systems and was instrumental in the creation of OpenAI’s first reasoning model, o1.
Joining Meta’s elite AI team — alongside leaders like Alexandr Wang, Jack Rae, and Johan Schalkwyk — Bansal will support Meta’s efforts to compete with frontier models from OpenAI and DeepSeek. The move reflects CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s aggressive push to position Meta at the forefront of next-generation AI development.
