Soumith Chintala, an Indian-born leader in artificial intelligence, has said he will leave Meta, the tech company run by Mark Zuckerberg, after more than ten years.
Soumith Chintala is a very important person in the field of AI today, especially when it comes to open-source frameworks, machine learning infrastructure, and research platforms. His story, which starts with him being born in India and ends with him becoming a top engineer and researcher in the US, is both interesting and useful.
Table of Contents
Soumith Chintala Early Life & Education
- Soumith says that he grew up in Hyderabad, India, and went to Vellore for college.
- He got his Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) in Information Technology from VIT University (Vellore) and then went to New York University (NYU) to get his Master’s in Computer Science.
- When he was at NYU, he worked in research labs on deep learning, computer vision, and generative models.
Soumith Chintala’s Birthplace, age, Profession, education, wife, children, and age etc.
| Full Name | Soumith Chintala |
|---|---|
| Known For | Creator of PyTorch, AI Researcher, Former Engineer at Meta (Facebook) |
| Profession | AI Scientist, Software Engineer, Researcher |
| Birthplace | Hyderabad, India |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Education | B.Tech in Information Technology – VIT University, VelloreMaster’s in Computer Science – New York University (NYU) |
| Current Residence | New York, USA |
| Age | Not publicly disclosed (estimated mid-30s) |
| Marital Status | Married |
| Wife’s Name | Aparna (name mentioned publicly in social media posts) |
| Children | 1 Daughter |
| Famous For | Building PyTorch, a leading open-source deep learning framework |
| Previous Employer | Meta (Facebook AI Research) |
| Years Active | 2012 – Present |
| Notable Works | PyTorch, Torch7, GAN research papers |
| Net Worth (Approx.) | Not officially disclosed |
| Hobbies & Interests | AI Research, Community Building, Robotics, Open-Source Development |
Soumith Chintala Career Highlights & Major Contributions
From MuseAmi & Early Research
- Before his current big jobs, Soumith worked at a company called MuseAmi, where he made deep learning models for mobile devices that combined music and vision tasks.
- While at NYU, he worked in Yann LeCun’s lab on pedestrian detection, depth images, and OCR with deep networks.
Torch → PyTorch
His most important contribution may be the part he played in making and growing the PyTorch framework.
- PyTorch came after Torch, an older deep learning framework, and set itself apart with its Python-native APIs, dynamic computation graphs, and strong support from both the community and industry.
- Soumith has said that the timing of building PyTorch was very important; if it had been built too soon or too late, it might not have been as successful.
- One source says that PyTorch binaries are downloaded about 2 million times a day and that there are tens of thousands of commits and tests each month. This shows how big the project he worked on was.
At Meta / Research & Infrastructure Leadership
- He started working for Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) in August 2014 as part of its AI research team.
- At Meta, he worked on more than just frameworks; he also worked on AI infrastructure, generative models, robotics, and the open-source AI ecosystem.
- He has called himself a “AI researcher, engineer, and community builder,” and he moves between these roles as an engineer, researcher, and leader.
Soumith Chintala Recent Transition
- Soumith Chintala said in November 2025 that he would be leaving Meta and stepping down as head of PyTorch.
- He said that after almost 11 years and almost 8 years of leading PyTorch, he wanted to start “something small again”—something new and less well-known, where he didn’t know exactly what he would be doing yet.
Leaving Meta and PyTorch
— Soumith Chintala (@soumithchintala) November 6, 2025
I'm stepping down from PyTorch and leaving Meta on November 17th.
tl;dr: Didn't want to be doing PyTorch forever, seemed like the perfect time to transition right after I got back from a long leave and the project built itself around me.
Eleven years… pic.twitter.com/LWGi0Joff8
Research Interests & Philosophy
- Soumith Chintala is interested in a wide range of technical fields, including deep learning infrastructure, generative adversarial networks (GANs), computer vision, and robotics. For instance, he helped write the paper “Laplacian Pyramid of Generative Adversarial Nets.”
- He thinks that AI tools should be open-source and driven by the community. He said in a keynote speech that open-source growth doesn’t start with “we want 10,000 users,” but with a more natural principle.
- About the growth of AI: In an interview/commentary from March 2025, he said, “We’re currently building very obedient students, not revolutionaries,” which shows that he has a complex view of where AI is and where it should go.
Legacy & Impact
- The growth and development of PyTorch have had an impact on the entire industry; many AI labs, businesses, and universities use it for research and deployment.
- He changed how AI platforms are built by putting more emphasis on paradigms that are flexible, based on Python, and dynamic.
- His work has had a big effect on the open-source AI community, making advanced ML tools easier to get.
- His story is especially inspiring for tech professionals and researchers from similar backgrounds because he is of Indian descent and has become well-known in AI around the world.
Conclusion
Soumith Chintala is more than just a “PyTorch guy”. He represents a junction where deep research, scalable engineering, open-source community, and global talent converge. His journey — from Hyderabad & VIT to NYU, MuseAmi, Meta and beyond — offers rich insights for anyone interested in how AI infrastructure takes shape. Writing about him offers not just a biography, but a narrative about how modern AI ecosystems are built and how they become accessible
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