Mira Murati, Co-Founder and CEO of Thinking Machines Lab, has appointed Soumith Chintala as the company’s new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) following the departure of Barret Zoph. Murati announced the leadership change in a post on X (formerly Twitter), writing, “We have parted ways with Barret Zoph,” and confirming that Chintala, who joined the company three months ago in November 2025, will assume the CTO role.
She described Chintala as a “brilliant and seasoned leader” who has made significant contributions to the AI field for over a decade.
Murati went on to say, “…He’s been a major contributor to our team. We could not be more excited to have him take on this new responsibility.”
We have parted ways with Barret Zoph.
Soumith Chintala will be the new CTO of Thinking Machines. He is a brilliant and seasoned leader who has made important contributions to the AI field for over a decade, and he’s been a major contributor to our team. We could not be more…
— Mira Murati (@miramurati) January 14, 2026
Who Is Soumith Chintala?
Soumith Chintala is the co-creator and long-time leader of PyTorch, one of the world’s most widely used open-source deep learning frameworks. Based in New York, he has worked extensively on advanced AI algorithms and open-source machine learning software. His career also includes leading large engineering and product teams that have built technology used by millions. Beyond this, he has consulted with hedge funds, worked on robotics projects, built frontend web software, and contributed to numerous open-source initiatives, as per his LinkedIn.
Chintala spent 11 years at Meta, where he joined as an engineering manager and rose through the ranks to hold senior leadership roles, including Vice President. He resigned in November 2025, having most recently served the role of an “AI fixer” within the organisation.
After leaving Meta, he joined former OpenAI executive Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab as a member of the technical staff. He was recently elevated to the role of Chief Technology Officer.
During his early years at Meta, Chintala created PyTorch, the open-source deep learning framework that today underpins a significant portion of global AI research and development.
He has also invested in several technology ventures, including Anthropic, Voleteo Group, K-Scale Labs, Aiwyn, and Spara, among others.
MS From NYU, BTech From VIT
Soumith Chintala was born and raised in Hyderabad, India. He attended Hyderabad Public School and had previously shared that he struggled with mathematics during his school years.
Chintala holds an MS in Computer Science from New York University and a BTech degree in Information Technology from Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) in Tamil Nadu.
Before 2012, Chintala worked with Pierre Sermanet and Yann LeCun on EBLearn, a C++-based deep learning framework that contributed to early advances in neural network research.
