Why Are Indian-origin Techies Quitting Meta?

The back-to-back exit of AI experts from Meta to join OpenAI is giving jitters to several techies over the increasing influence of AI in the sector.

After three top-rung AI experts quitting the company in just a month period, another Meta executive, Chaya Nayak, also announced that she is leaving the social media giant and would join OpenAI.

During the last one month, Rishabh Agarwal, Avi Verma, and Ethan Knight left the tech giant, with the latter two moving to Sam Altman’s OpenAI. Now, the departure of Indian-origin employee indicates significant loss for Mark Zuckerberg.

Nayak reflected on her 10-year journey at Meta through a LinkedIn post. In the post, she recalled how she began her journey with the Data for Good Initiative. “I remember my first weeks at Facebook like they were yesterday. I joined to help jumpstart Data for Good, an effort to show how data and AI/ML could benefit the world. What started as a bold experiment grew into the foundation of my career.”

During the 10 years of her stint in Meta, she held key roles at the social media giant and led teams that worked on projects of global outreach. She also led the Facebook Open Research and Transparency (FORT) team, which focused on data cleaning, differential privacy, and data clean rooms, to help researchers study the platform responsibly. “Meta gave me the chance to build products that supported communities in crisis with Disaster Maps,” she wrote.

She worked on projects like supporting global responses during the US 2020 elections and collaborating on academic publications about Meta’s impact on democracy. In the last two-and-a-half years, Nayak led projects on Generative AI, including building three generations of Llama and Meta AI. She said that her stint at Meta made her grow as a leader, develop confidence and boldness to chase audacious ideas and resilience, when things went astray.

She continued: “Today, I’m joining OpenAI to work with Irina Kofman on Special Initiatives – exploring new opportunities at the frontier of AI. It feels like the perfect next chapter: to take everything I’ve learned, and pour it into work that will help define what comes next for technology and society. The journey isn’t over. I’m just turning the page.”