Meta’s Billion-Dollar Brain Hunt: Pang’s Rs 1,670 Crore Deal Redefines AI Salaries

Meta’s aggressive push to dominate the AI frontier has triggered a seismic shift in Silicon Valley’s talent economy. In a jaw-dropping move, Meta has reportedly hired Apple’s Ruoming Pang with a compensation package worth Rs 1,670 crore—eclipsing the Rs 800 crore deal offered to OpenAI’s Trapit Bansal just weeks earlier.  

Key Highlights from Meta’s Superintelligence Hiring Spree  

1. Pang’s Mega Deal  
   - Ruoming Pang, former head of Apple’s Foundation Models team, joins Meta with a $200 million package  
   - The deal includes base salary, signing bonus, and a massive stock grant tied to performance metrics  

2. Bansal’s Rs 800 Crore Offer  
   - Trapit Bansal, an IIT-Kanpur alumnus and ex-OpenAI researcher, was offered $100 million  
   - His work on reasoning models like o1 helped shape ChatGPT’s cognitive backbone  

3. Meta’s Superintelligence Lab Strategy  
   - Meta is consolidating its AI efforts under the Superintelligence Lab to rival OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic  
   - The lab aims to build AI systems that surpass human intelligence across all domains  

4. Compensation Structure and Loyalty Clauses  
   - Equity forms the bulk of these deals, with extended vesting periods and performance-linked payouts  
   - Signing bonuses are adjusted to offset equity losses from previous roles  

5. Industry Impact  
   - Meta’s hiring spree intensifies the AI talent war, pushing rivals to rethink retention strategies  
   - These packages now rival or exceed CEO salaries at global banks  

Sources: Financial Express, Times of India, Economic Times, Bloomberg, India Today, MSN News, Free Press Journal