In a huge boost to the fledgling world of artificial intelligence, Meta Platforms has poached a star researcher from OpenAI, named Trapit Bansal as it builds its ‘superintelligence’ team. This strategic appointment demonstrates Meta’s aggressive approach to achieve leadership in the next frontier of AI development, heightening the hot competition for talent among tech giants worldwide.
Bansal, who was an early member of the o1 reasoning team for OpenAI and made major contributions to its reinforcement learning work, left OpenAI in June 2025, the Financial Times reported. His specialty in building systems capable of thinking, planning and understanding the physical world is likely to prove central to Meta’s efforts to develop more sophisticated and humanlike AI.
This recruitment ‘grab’ has been led by none other than Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself, and there are well-reported instances of mega salaries being bid for the world’s top AI scientists. Though the hiring hasn’t yet reached the point where candidates can command $100 million sings bonuses others have already called “fake news,” the scramble for this talent does illustrate a huge premium being placed on top AI minds.
Bansal’s appointment is among a broader wave of talent coming into Meta’s superintelligence unit. In addition to Futurewei Researcher Xinyu Li, a handful of other ex-OpenAI employees have joined Meta in recent weeks, and several are coming from Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence arm, as well as Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, who is said to be leading the unit.
The unified push is an indication of Meta’s intention to step on the gas with its AI prowess, especially when it comes to reasoning models, an area where competitors like OpenAI and Google have already generated exciting results.
This aggressive talent acquisition comes as Meta at the same time has been said to be working on an AI push from within that the company feels has not been moving quickly enough, and an existential need to catch up in the drive to build a generative AI stack.
By pulling together a powerhouse team with expertise across a range of disciplines, Meta says it wants to build artificial-intelligence systems to rival, and possibly surpass, the industry’s current leaders. The shift not only represents a major milestone for Meta, but also underscores the stakes of the competition, which is all about the pursuit of superintelligence and is becoming even more focused on the ability to draw and retain the world’s smartest AI talent.