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

Image Source: The Financial Express

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