From Rejection to Meta VP: The Unlikely Rise of Soumith Chintala

Soumith Chintala’s career defies the conventional Indian tech career playbook. Growing up in Hyderabad, he did not have a computer at home — a far cry from the well-resourced environments of elite engineering institutes. He graduated from VIT University in 2009, without the IIT or NIT tag often considered essential for breaking into top-tier global tech firms.

His ambition to study in the United States met a wall of rejection: 27 American universities turned him down. Chintala persisted, continuing to apply until he finally secured admission to New York University. There, working under renowned AI pioneer Yann LeCun, he began building the deep learning expertise that would soon reshape the field.

Even after earning his graduate credentials, immediate professional success remained elusive. He faced repeated job rejections and visa challenges that forced him to leave the US temporarily. However, in 2014 he landed a role at Meta AI's research division, where he spearheaded the creation of PyTorch — the open-source machine learning framework that now underpins an estimated 90% of AI research. Over 11 years at Meta, he climbed from L4 software engineer to Vice President and Fellow, shaping the company’s AI infrastructure. Today, he is CTO of the San Francisco-based startup Thinking Machines Lab, continuing to push boundaries in artificial intelligence.

Why Chintala's Path Matters for the Tech World

A Path That Challenges India's Engineering Pedigree Hierarchy

Chintala's story is a powerful counter-narrative to the over-indexing on IIT and NIT labels. It illustrates that world-class contributions can arise from a non-elite Indian university background, especially when paired with the right mentorship and an unyielding drive. His experience working under Yann LeCun at NYU was pivotal — providing access to cutting-edge AI research that compensated for any missing institutional prestige.

PyTorch's Dominance and What Chintala's Exit Means

PyTorch has become the de facto tool for deep learning, used by everyone from OpenAI and Tesla to autonomous driving labs. Chintala's departure from Meta after more than a decade marks the end of an era for the framework's steward. His move to a startup as CTO suggests he is now shifting his focus from open-source infrastructure leadership to building a company from the ground up, likely applying the same first-principles thinking that powered PyTorch's success.