Indian-Origin Chaya Nayak Leaves Meta to Join OpenAI’s Special Initiatives Team

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Chaya Nayak, one of Meta’s most senior artificial intelligence executives, has left the company. After decades of work for Facebook, she is now set to join OpenAI. Her exit marks another high-profile departure from Mark Zuckerberg’s AI division at a time when competition for top AI talent is intensifying.

Nayak confirmed the move in a reflective LinkedIn post, announcing she will join OpenAI’s Special Initiatives team led by Irina Kofman in August. “It feels like the perfect next chapter,” she wrote, adding that her work will focus on shaping the future of technology and society.

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At Meta, Nayak most recently served as Director of Product Management for Generative AI. She played a key role in building three generations of Meta’s Llama AI models over the past 2.5 years. Reflecting on this work, she wrote that the experience taught her resilience, boldness, and confidence while building products “at incredible speed.” Before that, she led the Facebook Open Research and Transparency (FORT) team, which built privacy-protective tools for academics to study the platform’s impact, including research into Meta’s role during the 2020 U.S. elections. She also oversaw the Data for Good initiative, which applied AI and data science to global challenges.

Her work included Disaster Maps for crisis-hit communities and research on Meta’s role in democracy during the 2020 U.S. elections. “I grew as a leader, learned confidence, and built resilience when things didn’t go as planned,” she reflected in her farewell note.

Nayak’s departure comes amid a string of exits from Meta’s AI teams. Wired recently reported that three members of Meta’s Superintelligence Labs—Rishabh Agarwal, Avi Verma, and Ethan Knight—left within weeks of each other. Verma and Knight have since joined OpenAI, while Agarwal said he left his seven-figure role to “take a different kind of risk.”

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The exits highlight Meta’s growing struggle to retain talent as rivals like OpenAI attract senior researchers. Zuckerberg only recently launched the Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), poaching several AI experts from competitors, including OpenAI itself. But since then, Business Insider has reported that at least eight employees have quit, raising questions about Meta’s ambitious AI push.

Nayak, an Indian-origin executive, joined Meta (then Facebook) in 2016 as Head of Data for Good. She later became Product Manager and Head of Research and Transparency before moving into AI leadership roles. She holds a Master’s in Public Policy and Data Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor’s in Global Studies from the University of Wisconsin.

In her farewell note, she thanked colleagues and highlighted her work on projects spanning disaster response, data privacy, and AI model development. She signed off with optimism: “The journey isn’t over. I’m just turning the page.” [Rh/VP]

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