Soumith Chintala has been appointed CTO of Thinking Machines Lab, the company co-founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati. Murati announced that Barret Zoph has stepped down from his position as chief technology officer of Thinking Machines Lab and would be replaced by Chintala, who had joined the company in November.
She described Chintala as “a brilliant and seasoned leader who has made important contributions to the AI field for over a decade.”
Who is Soumith Chintala?
Soumith Chintala is an Indian-origin computer scientist and one of the most influential figures in artificial intelligence today — best known as the co-creator and long-time leader of PyTorch.
Chintala spent much of his professional life at Meta (formerly Facebook), resigning as a VP at the Mark Zuckerberg-led company in November 2025.
After his 11-year stint at Meta, he joined Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab as a member of the technical staff — a position from which he was recently elevated to CTO.
It was during his early years at Meta that he created PyTorch, the open-source deep-learning framework that powers much of modern AI research and development around the world.
Early life and education
{{/usCountry}}It was during his early years at Meta that he created PyTorch, the open-source deep-learning framework that powers much of modern AI research and development around the world.
Early life and education
{{/usCountry}}Soumith Chintala was born and raised in Hyderabad, India. Growing up, he attended Hyderabad Public School, and by his own account, struggled with mathematics.
Despite early academic struggles, he developed a keen interest in computers and problem-solving, which eventually led him to pursue higher education in technology.
Chintala holds a B.Tech degree in Information Technology from Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) in Tamil Nadu.
After completing his undergraduate degree from VIT in 2009, he moved to the United States for further studies. He earned a Master’s in Computer Science from New York University, where he worked in deep learning research in the lab of renowned AI scientist Yann LeCun.
Career in the US
After graduating from NYU in 2012, Chintala faced repeated rejections from jobs, including multiple rejections from DeepMind. The only role he could secure was as a test engineer at Amazon.
With help from his PhD mentor, he eventually landed a job at a small startup called MuseAmi.
According to venture capitalist Deedy Das, in 2011–12, Chintala built one of the fastest AI inference engines for mobile phones — yet DeepMind still rejected him. He reached out to Yann LeCun again and, largely because of his open-source work on Torch7, joined Facebook AI Research (FAIR).
His time at FAIR went on to be highly successful. He led a small three-person Torch7 team and co-created PyTorch.
At Meta from 2014 to 2025, Chintala held senior technical and leadership roles — culminating in titles such as Distinguished Engineer and Vice President.
(Also read: From 'Tier 2' Indian college to VP at Meta: The remarkable rise of Soumith Chintala)