January 15, 2026 – Soumith Chintala, the Indian-origin AI pioneer and co-creator of PyTorch, has been appointed Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Thinking Machines Lab, the AI company co-founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati. Chintala replaces Barret Zoph, who recently stepped down from the role. Murati praised 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 one of the most influential figures in modern artificial intelligence. He is best known for co-creating PyTorch, an open-source deep learning framework widely used in AI research and applications worldwide. Chintala spent 11 years at Meta (formerly Facebook), holding senior roles including Vice President and Distinguished Engineer, before joining Thinking Machines Lab in November 2025.
During his early years at Meta, he co-led the Torch7 team and developed PyTorch, which became a cornerstone of AI research for universities, startups, and tech giants alike.
Early Life and Education
Chintala was born and raised in Hyderabad, India, and attended Hyderabad Public School. Despite struggling with mathematics early on, he developed a strong interest in computers and problem-solving.
He earned his B.Tech in Information Technology from Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Tamil Nadu, in 2009. Following this, he moved to the United States and completed a Master’s in Computer Science at New York University (NYU), where he conducted deep learning research under the guidance of AI pioneer Yann LeCun.
Career Journey in the United States
After graduating from NYU in 2012, Chintala faced multiple job rejections, including from DeepMind, and initially worked as a test engineer at Amazon. With mentorship from his PhD advisor, he joined a small startup called MuseAmi, where he built one of the fastest AI inference engines for mobile devices.
His open-source contributions to Torch7 caught the attention of Facebook AI Research (FAIR), and he joined FAIR in 2014. Over the next decade, he rose through the ranks at Meta, culminating in leadership positions that shaped some of the company’s most advanced AI technologies.
Soumith Chintala at Thinking Machines Lab
Chintala joined Thinking Machines Lab as part of the technical staff in November 2025. With his elevation to CTO, he will lead AI development, strategy, and research at the company, which is co-founded by Mira Murati and aims to push the boundaries of machine learning and artificial intelligence innovation.
