Meta's Superintelligence team has 44 members—only two of Indian origin
What's the story
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has formed a new Superintelligence team. The initiative is part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's aggressive strategy to recruit top AI talent. The team comprises 44 members, with only two being Indian-origin researchers: Trapit Bansal and Hammad Syed. The information comes from a social media user (@deedydas), who shared a detailed employee list. Posting it on X, the user stated, "Each of these people are likely getting paid $10-$100M per year."
Scenario
The biggest chunk of hires came from OpenAI
According to the post, 50% of the hires are from China, with 75% holding PhDs and 70% being researchers. The largest share (40%) was hired from OpenAI, followed by 20% from Google's DeepMind and 15% from Scale AI. The Superintelligence Labs is a dedicated unit to streamline Meta's AI efforts. The lab will be led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and ex-GitHub chief Nat Friedman, following Meta's investment in Scale and intensified recruitment drive for top-tier AI talent.
Twitter Post
Take a look at the details
🚨 BREAKING: Detailed list of all 44 people in Meta's Superintelligence team.
— Deedy (@deedydas) July 19, 2025
— 50% from China
— 75% have PhDs, 70% Researchers
— 40% from OpenAI, 20% DeepMind, 15% Scale
— 20% L8+ level
— 75% 1st gen immigrants
Each of these people are likely getting paid $10-$100M/yr. pic.twitter.com/LmlAk6ceu9
Team profiles
Bansal and Syed's background
Bansal, an IIT Kanpur alumnus, has previously worked with Meta in 2018. He has also done postgraduate research at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) and worked at four leading AI institutions: OpenAI, Microsoft Research, Google Research, and Facebook. Syed, who co-founded voice start-up PlayAI with Mahmoud Felfel in 2021, joined Meta earlier this week after his company was acquired by the tech giant. PlayAI can create realistic text-to-speech models in over 30 languages.
New recruits
Meta's recruitment drive for the new team
The recruitment drive for the Meta Superintelligence team is still going strong. The latest additions are Mark Lee and Tom Gunter, both Apple AI researchers. Their exit comes just weeks after Ruoming Pang, who previously led Apple's AI models team, was poached with a pay package of over $200 million. Lee has already joined Meta, while Gunter is expected to join soon.