Meta is aggressively poaching top AI talent, led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, to build its Superintelligence Team. The team is part of Meta's ambitious plan to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) and superintelligence. Meta's recruitment strategy involves offering substantial compensation packages, sometimes exceeding $150 million, to attract top talent from competitors like Apple, Google, and OpenAI.
Recently, a social media user shared a list of 44 employees allegedly working on Meta's AI project, claiming the list was obtained from an anonymous employee. According to the post, these employees are likely earning between $10 million and $100 million per year. Out of 44, only two Indian-origin researchers, Trapit Bansal and Hammad Syed, have been included in Meta's AI team.
Notably, half of the hires are reportedly from China, with around 75% holding PhDs and 70% being researchers. The list also suggests that Meta's recruitment efforts have been successful in poaching talent from top companies, with 40% of the hires coming from OpenAI, 20% from Google's DeepMind, and 15% from Scale.
See the post here:
Who are the 2 Indians in the list?
Trapit Bansal, an IIT Kanpur alumnus with a PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, specialises in meta-learning, deep learning, and natural language processing. He has worked at top AI institutions like OpenAI, Microsoft Research, Google Research, and Facebook. He was involved in developing OpenAI's O-series AI models and has collaborated with notable AI researchers like Ilya Sutskever.
Hammad Syed, a recent addition to Meta, co-founded voice startup PlayAI with Mahmoud Felfel in 2021. PlayAI specialises in creating lifelike text-to-speech models and voice agents in over 30 languages. According to a Bloomberg report citing an internal memo, the entire PlayAI team is set to join Meta, further bolstering the company's AI capabilities.
About Meta's Superintelligence Labs
Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL) is a division of Meta, announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg in July 2025, aimed at advancing artificial general intelligence (AGI) to achieve "superintelligence". MSL consolidates Meta's AI efforts, including its foundation model teams, product teams, Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) division, and a new lab focused on next-generation large language models (LLMs). The initiative reflects Meta's ambition to compete with leading AI organisations like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, following setbacks with its Llama 4 model and internal challenges like staff departures and underperforming product releases.
MSL is led by Alexandr Wang, former CEO of Scale AI, who serves as Meta's Chief AI Officer. Nat Friedman, former GitHub CEO and a prominent AI investor, co-leads MSL, focusing on AI products and applied research.
