Chaya Nayak OpenAI: Former Meta Director Joins AI Giant
Chaya Nayak, Meta’s Director of Product Management and Generative AI, will be joining artificial intelligence leader OpenAI in August 2025. Acknowledged for contributions to product development and AI. Nayak called the move the “perfect next phase” of her career.
Chaya Nayak’s Move to OpenAI
Nayak made her announcement on LinkedIn. She shared that she will be working with Irina Kofman on Special Initiatives at OpenAI. Also, she will be exploring new frontiers at the edge of artificial intelligence.
Reflecting on her first experience working at Facebook, she remarked:
“It started as a crazy experiment and became… the foundation of my career… I never realized in those first weeks that I would then be able to spend almost a decade having some of the best experiences of my life.”
Nayak’s path reflects the evolving landscape of modern technology in India and around the world. AI has become a driver of change.
What She Learned in Her Time at Meta
She spent almost nine years at Meta. She not only focused on product management but also projects that lived on a global scale. Also, she emphasized how the role helped build her confidence, assertiveness, and resilience, all important characteristics supporting her in challenging times and pushed her to aim for high aspirations.
She also gave a nod to Meta for helping her build a strong set of professional relationships, noting that friends and colleagues were crucial to influencing her trajectory as a leader.
There were a Firm Contributions at Meta
While at Meta, Nayak contributed to several innovative projects:
- Data for Good Initiative – a project that demonstrated how data and AI/ML could help communities in crisis.
- Disaster Maps – tools developed in support of humanitarian activities during a time of crisis.
- Facebook Open Research and Transparency Team (FORT) – where she worked on data cleaning, differential privacy, and data clean rooms to support responsible data sharing.
- Elections & Sociology Studies – working on articles with a variety of publications, including Science, about the impact of Meta on elections, mainly around the 2020 U.S. elections.
- Generative AI Initiatives – focused on the development of three iterations of LLaMA and improving Meta AI over the last 2.5 years.
These contributions document her impact contributing to not only the ethical path and technical path of AI at Meta.
From Meta to OpenAI: What Comes Next?
At OpenAI, Nayak will likely work on projects that push the limits of artificial intelligence applications. Her experience and specialization in generative AI, ethical data use, and large language models are likely to empower OpenAI’s next era of innovation.
As a woman in tech, Nayak’s role in this pathway is significant because of the increasing importance of women leaders in technology, especially those at leading the charge of the world’s AI future.
The Bigger Picture: AI and Recent Technology Developments in India
Nayak’s move is happening while AI developments are influencing the global technology narrative. At the same time, recent technology in India developments and rapid growth of AI in areas such as healthcare, finance, education, and governance are taking firms and start-ups to integrate generative AI at an ever-increasing rate, drawing on the same types of movements that leaders like Nayak are a champion for on a global scale.
India will want to align itself next to the likes of OpenAI as the world’s technology consumer and innovator as firms and policymakers look at how to responsibly harness the advances made.
Chaya Nayak’s move from Meta to OpenAI represents not just a personal accomplishment, it reflects a larger shift in the global technology landscape. Her work in generative AI, data transparency, and crisis response consistently inspire experts globally.
With this new chapter commencing, the world—and particularly India’s tech ecosystem—will be watching to see how her influence leads the next wave of intelligence.
