Meta Taps ChatGPT Architect Shengjia Zhao for New Superintelligence Lab

Meta Platforms has made a decisive move in the escalating race for artificial intelligence supremacy, formally appointing Shengjia Zhao, a key researcher and co-creator of OpenAI's ChatGPT, as the Chief Scientist of its new Superintelligence Labs.[1][2][3] The appointment solidifies a strategic talent acquisition that underscores Meta's aggressive, multi-billion-dollar effort to overhaul its AI division and directly challenge the industry's front-runners.[1][3] CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed the move, stating that Zhao was a "co-founder of the new lab and has been our lead scientist from day one," signaling a clear intention to build a world-class team capable of achieving the monumental goal of artificial general intelligence (AGI).[1][4][5] This high-profile hire from a principal rival is a powerful statement about Meta's ambitions and its willingness to invest heavily in the human capital required to build the future of AI.

Shengjia Zhao is not just another AI researcher; he is an architect of some of the most transformative AI technologies developed to date.[6] With a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University and a bachelor's degree from Tsinghua University, Zhao's academic background is impeccable.[7][5] His tenure at OpenAI placed him at the epicenter of the generative AI revolution, where he was a co-author of the original research paper for ChatGPT.[5] His contributions were foundational to the development of both ChatGPT and the more powerful GPT-4 model.[7][1][2] Beyond these well-known models, Zhao was instrumental in creating smaller, more efficient models like GPT-4.1 and o3 and led crucial efforts in synthetic data generation, a technique vital for training today's large language models.[7][1] Perhaps most significantly, Zhao was a key researcher on OpenAI's first reasoning model, known as o1.[5] This model helped pioneer the "chain-of-thought" prompting technique, a breakthrough that allows AI systems to break down complex problems into sequential steps, thereby improving their reasoning capabilities and inspiring a new wave of similar models across the industry from competitors like Google and DeepSeek.[8][7][5] Zuckerberg himself noted that Zhao has pioneered several breakthroughs, including a "new scaling paradigm" that will be central to Meta's future research.[1][9][10]

Zhao's appointment is a cornerstone of Meta's newly established Superintelligence Labs (MSL), a division created in 2025 to unify the company's AI efforts and accelerate its pursuit of AGI.[8][7][11] This lab consolidates Meta's foundational model research, including the Llama series, with its product AI teams under a single, focused mission.[7][12] The stated goal is audacious: to build what Zuckerberg describes as "personal superintelligence for everyone," envisioning AI systems that can reason and learn at or beyond human capability, integrated across all of Meta's platforms.[9][13][14] To lead this effort, Meta has brought in formidable leadership. Zhao will report to Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of data-labeling startup Scale AI, who joined Meta after it invested heavily in his company.[8][3] This leadership structure is designed to pair Zhao's deep scientific vision with Wang's strategic and operational expertise.[10] The lab operates independently from Meta's long-standing Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) division, led by deep learning pioneer Yann LeCun.[2][4] While FAIR continues its long-term, exploratory research, MSL is tasked with delivering near-term breakthroughs and spearheading the direct path to superintelligence.[15] This ambitious venture is backed by staggering financial commitments, with Meta investing billions in AI talent and planning to spend hundreds of billions on compute infrastructure, including a 1-gigawatt cloud computing cluster in Ohio codenamed "Prometheus" set to come online by 2026.[4][9][16]

The recruitment of Shengjia Zhao is a clear victory for Meta in the fierce and incredibly expensive "AI talent war" raging across Silicon Valley.[6] Tech giants are locked in an intense struggle to hire and retain the very small pool of elite researchers who can build and advance frontier AI models.[6][17] Meta has adopted an exceptionally aggressive strategy, with Zuckerberg personally courting top talent from rivals like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic.[10][15] The company has reportedly offered unprecedented compensation packages, with some rumors suggesting nine-figure deals, to lure away the brightest minds in the field.[13][10] Zhao is one of several high-profile researchers who have recently made the move from OpenAI to Meta, a talent drain that could significantly impact the competitive landscape.[2][5] By bringing in a leader with direct experience in creating category-defining models like ChatGPT and o1, Meta directly addresses a gap in its own portfolio and gains invaluable institutional knowledge.[8][10][16] This expertise is expected to directly influence the development of Meta's foundational Llama models, which, while popular in the open-source community, have yet to consistently match the performance of closed-source competitors like OpenAI's GPT-4 or Google's Gemini.[8]

In conclusion, the formal appointment of Shengjia Zhao as Chief Scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs marks a pivotal moment in the company's evolution. It is the culmination of a deliberate and costly strategy to reorient its focus and resources toward the grand challenge of building superintelligent AI.[8][6] By securing a researcher with a proven track record of creating revolutionary AI reasoning and language models and placing him at the heart of a new, well-funded, and highly focused lab, Meta has unequivocally declared its intention to not just participate in the AI race, but to lead it.[3][12] The collaboration between Zhao's scientific acumen, Alexandr Wang's strategic leadership, and Mark Zuckerberg's immense resources creates a formidable force. The entire tech world will be watching closely to see if this new brain trust can deliver on its promise of personal superintelligence and reshape the future of technology in the process.[6]