Is the whole lot high-quality at Meta? Simply after saying the Superintelligence group reshuffle, 3 massive hires made an exit, certainly one of them is Rishabh Agarwal, who desires to…
Large tech firms are poaching one another’s AI expertise to be on high of the AI sport in 2025. And Meta’s title comes first. Meta is doing all it may to draw one of the best expertise to strengthen its Superintelligence AI group. It has already employed 50 (20+ from Meta, 13 from Google, 3 from Apple, 3 from Grok, and a couple of from Anthropic) from its rivals. Simply when all of that is occurring, Rishabh Agarwal, a high-profile, high-salaried ($1 million) AI researcher, leaves Meta. What’s so shocking in regards to the exit is that he left the corporate solely after 5 months of becoming a member of. What might have precipitated him to take this powerful name? Be taught extra.
What Occurred?
Rishabh Agarwal, certainly one of Meta’s high hires this 12 months, joined the corporate in April 2024. Meta employed him with a whopping $1 million wage bundle. He labored for about 5 months with Meta and stated goodbye to the corporate on August 25.
Who Is Rishabh Agarwal?
Earlier than Rishabh Agarwal, a $1 million rent from Meta, he was a gifted AI researcher who labored for Google for over 7 years. Here is the timeline of his profession:
- He interned at Saavn, Tower Analysis Capital, and Waymo from 2016 to 2018.
- Employed by Google Mind in 2018 as a Senior Analysis Scientist.
- In 2023, he moved to DeepMind (Google’s superior AI firm) to work as a Employees Analysis Scientist.
- He then grew to become an Adjunct Professor at McGill College in Canada in 2024.
- Lately, in April 2024, he joined Meta’s Superintelligence Lab as a Analysis Scientist.
Training:
- Rishabh Agarwal studied Pc Science & Engineering at IIT Bombay.
- Received his PhD in AI at Mila (Quebec, Canada), a world-famous AI analysis institute.
Awards:
He received the Greatest Paper Award at NeurIPS 2021, one of many world’s largest AI conferences.
Two months in the past, Mark Zuckerberg introduced (On July 30, 2025) the Superintelligence Labs (MSL). Meta created a Superintelligence Lab to construct superintelligent AI. For a similar, Meta employed Rishabh Agarwal, who labored on:
Publish-training for considering fashions, that means making the AI fashions smarter as soon as they’re educated.
Scaling reinforcement studying strategies, that means coaching the AI to study from the trial and error methodology, however on a big scale.
Bettering distillation strategies includes creating smaller, extra revolutionary, and quicker AI fashions by compressing the large fashions.
Meta went on a hiring spree early this 12 months, spending billions of {dollars} to poach expertise from its rivals. It employed folks from Google, OpenAI, xAI, and Anthropic. Rishabh was a kind of “star hires” for Meta this 12 months.
Nonetheless, issues are shortly taking a U-turn for Meta and its new hires after the corporate introduced a group reshuffle into 4 divisions. Rishabh Agarwal was not the one one who left the corporate; there are extra.
- Avi Verma → Left OpenAI → employed by Meta → now again to OpenAI.
- Ethan Knight → Left OpenAI → moved to Elon Musk’s xAI → employed by Meta → once more again to OpenAI.
The perfect abilities leaving the corporate in such a brief span is making folks surprise why. That is regarding for Meta, given its mission to construct the world’s strongest AI.
Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold advised Wired, “Throughout an intense recruiting course of, some folks will resolve to remain of their present job reasonably than beginning a brand new one. That’s regular.”
On August 25, Rishabh wrote on the platform ‘X’ saying he needed “to tackle a unique sort of danger”…
“That is my final week at @AIatMeta. It was a troublesome choice to not proceed with the brand new Superintelligence TBD lab, particularly given the expertise and compute density. However after 7.5 years throughout Google Mind, DeepMind, and Meta, I felt the pull to tackle a unique sort of danger.”
Causes for leaving are nonetheless unclear as a result of Rishabh didn’t point out whether or not he was becoming a member of one other firm, beginning his personal firm, or pursuing a unique ardour.
WIDGET: questionnaire | CAMPAIGN: Easy Questionnaire
