'Perfect next chapter': Indian-origin Chaya Nayak quits Meta to join OpenAI
Announcing her next move, Chaya Nayak said she is joining OpenAI to work with Irina Kofman on Special Initiatives.
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Chaya Nayak, a long-time Meta executive and one of the company's key AI leaders, has announced her departure to join Sam Altman-led OpenAI.
In a LinkedIn post, Nayak reflected on her decade-long journey with Meta, which began with the Data for Good initiative. "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," she wrote.
Over the years, Nayak played a pivotal role in projects that applied AI and data to solve global challenges. She helped build Disaster Maps to support communities in crisis, and later led the Facebook Open Research and Transparency (FORT) team. There, she worked on responsible research frameworks including data cleaning, differential privacy, and clean rooms.
She also contributed to global responses during the 2020 U.S. elections and academic collaborations examining Meta's influence on democracy.
More recently, Nayak was instrumental in shaping Meta's Generative AI strategy, working on three generations of the company's large language models, Llama and Meta AI. "In the last 2.5 years, I worked on GenAI – solving hard problems at incredible speed, and imagining what the next wave of AI could mean for society," she wrote.
Announcing her next move, Nayak said she is joining OpenAI to work with Irina Kofman on Special Initiatives. "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."
Her exit follows a string of recent AI talent departures from Meta.
According to Wired, at least three employees from the company's SuperIntelligence Labs (MSL) - Rishabh Agarwal, Avi Verma, and Ethan Knight - have also resigned in recent weeks.
Both Verma and Knight have rejoined OpenAI, while Agarwal cited the desire to take on "a different kind of risk" despite a seven -figure salary.
