Meta Platforms has announced the appointment of Shengjia Zhao, one of the co-creators of ChatGPT, as the chief scientist for its newly formed Superintelligence Lab. This move, highlighted by CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday, underscores the company’s commitment to advancing its AI capabilities.
In a post on Threads, Zuckerberg outlined Zhao’s responsibilities, stating that he will be instrumental in shaping the research and scientific priorities for the lab, working closely with him and Alexandr Wang, Meta’s Chief AI Officer. Wang was recruited from Scale AI, a startup in which Meta has recently invested significantly.
Zhao brings substantial expertise to Meta, having previously served as a research scientist at OpenAI. He has played a key role in developing ChatGPT, along with its successor GPT-4, and various mini models such as 4.1 and o3.
The hiring of Zhao is part of a larger trend as Meta seeks to strengthen its talent pool amidst a competitive landscape in the AI sector. In recent weeks, several researchers have transitioned from OpenAI to Meta, reflecting Zuckerberg’s strategy to bridge the gap in advanced AI capabilities. The company has been luring top talent with some of the best compensation packages in Silicon Valley, as well as attractive startup partnerships, particularly following the lukewarm reception of its Llama 4 model.
Meta recently established the Superintelligence Lab to centralize efforts related to its Llama models and its long-term objectives concerning artificial general intelligence. According to Zuckerberg’s post, Zhao is one of the co-founders of this lab, which operates independently from FAIR, Meta’s established AI research branch led by prominent deep learning figure Yann LeCun.
Zuckerberg has expressed Meta’s ambition to achieve “full general intelligence” and to make its findings available as open source. This approach has prompted a mix of support and concern within the AI research community.
© Thomson Reuters 2025