Meta Platforms has appointed Shengjia Zhao, co-creator of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and a key architect behind GPT-4, as the chief scientist of its recently launched Superintelligence Lab, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced on July 25. The move underscores Meta’s accelerating investment in artificial intelligence (AI) as it seeks to close the gap with rivals OpenAI and Google in the race to build artificial general intelligence (AGI). Zhao will work directly with Zuckerberg and Meta’s Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, who joined the company from Scale AI in June after Meta made a $14 billion investment in the startup.
“Shengjia has already pioneered several breakthroughs including a new scaling paradigm, and distinguished himself as a leader in the field,” Zuckerberg said in a Threads post. “I’m looking forward to working closely with him to advance his scientific vision.” Zhao, who joined Meta in June, is also a co-founder of the Superintelligence Lab and has been “our lead scientist from day one,” according to Zuckerberg. His formal appointment follows months of high-profile recruiting efforts and a wave of talent migration from OpenAI to Meta.
Zhao’s AI track record and Meta’s open-source strategy
Zhao played a pivotal role in creating ChatGPT, GPT-4, and a series of mini models such as 4.1 and o3. He also led synthetic data research at OpenAI and contributed to the development of OpenAI’s first reasoning model, o1, which helped inspire similar chain-of-thought AI systems across the industry.
Zuckerberg reiterated Meta’s ambition to build “full general intelligence” and open-source its models, a strategy that has sparked both support and criticism from the broader AI research community. The Superintelligence Lab operates separately from Meta’s long-established FAIR division, which is still led by AI pioneer Yann LeCun. LeCun will continue in his role and now reports to Wang.
Meta’s expanding AI empire
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Meta is pouring “hundreds of billions of dollars” into AI infrastructure, Zuckerberg said earlier this month. The formation of the Superintelligence Lab marks a turning point for Meta’s AI strategy, consolidating its work on the Llama model family and broader AGI goals. “This is just the beginning,” Zuckerberg said. “The next few years are going to be very exciting.”
(With inputs from agencies)