Rs 2,400 Crore For Two AI Engineers: What Meta's Hiring Spree Means

In a high-stakes talent war that has Silicon Valley abuzz, Meta Platforms is making aggressive moves to secure the world's leading AI researchers, with a significant focus on tech pioneers. Meta Platforms has unveiled massive compensation packages - Rs 800 crore (approximately $100 million) for Trapit Bansal and Rs 1,600 crore (around $200 million) for Ruoming Pang - as part of its new Superintelligence Labs, aiming to rival peers like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Apple, and Anthropic.

Who Are These AI Stars?

Trapit Bansal

A graduate of IIT Kanpur, Trapit Bansal joined OpenAI in 2022 and made significant contributions to its reinforcement learning efforts and early AI reasoning models. TechCrunch described him as "a highly influential OpenAI researcher." There, he played a crucial role in developing OpenAI's "O-series" reasoning models, particularly the foundational "O1" model, working closely with co-founder Ilya Sutskever. Earlier this month, he confirmed on X (formerly Twitter): "Thrilled to be joining Meta! Superintelligence is now in sight".

Thrilled to be joining @Meta! Superintelligence is now in sight 🚀

— Trapit Bansal (@TrapitBansal) June 30, 2025

Ruoming Pang

Previously, the head of Apple's Foundation Models team, Ruoming Pang, was responsible for leading the development of Apple's advanced AI systems. He departed Apple in early July to join Meta's newly launched Superintelligence Labs, marking a major blow to Apple's AI division.

Why Meta's Big Bet?

1. Elite talent war: Meta is aggressively combating fierce competition for top-tier AI researchers, offering record-breaking compensation that far exceeds even the salaries of some global CEOs.

2. Unified AI strategy: The Superintelligence Labs aim to consolidate Meta's fragmented AI teams under a centralised vision for developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) and eventually surpassing it.

3. Building future infrastructure: These hires align with Meta's rollout of massive AI compute assets, including its "Prometheus" supercluster expected online by 2026 and temporary mega-data-centres, signalling a long-term investment in AI leadership.

What Lies Ahead

Key architects: Bansal and Pang, along with Alexandr Wang, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross and other hires (e.g., from OpenAI, DeepMind and Anthropic), will spearhead core AI research.

Unified Direction: Superintelligence Labs aims to integrate Meta's scattered AI efforts under a cohesive long-term AGI roadmap.

High Stakes: These hires are not just talent additions; they're strategic pillars that signal Meta's intent to lead the next AI epoch.