Meta Taps ChatGPT Co-Creator to Lead New Superintelligence Lab

Meta has officially named Shengjia Zhao as Chief Scientist of its new Superintelligence Labs, the company’s latest push into advanced AI.

Mark Zuckerberg announced the news on Friday, calling Zhao a “pioneer” in the field who has already led major breakthroughs, including a new way to scale AI systems. Zhao helped create Meta’s Superintelligence Labs and has been the lead scientist since day one, but now his role is formalized.

“We’re building an elite, talent-dense team,” Zuckerberg said on Threads, adding that Zhao will shape the lab’s research agenda and work directly with him and Meta AI leader Alex Smola.

Zhao, who posted “Let’s build!” on X, said he’s looking forward to developing artificial superintelligence (ASI) that’s aligned with people and empowering for users.

Before joining Meta earlier this year, Zhao worked at OpenAI and contributed to projects like ChatGPT and GPT-4. He’s one of the co-creators of ChatGPT.

Zuckerberg also clarified that this move won’t affect Yann LeCun, who remains Chief Scientist of Meta’s other major AI group, FAIR (Fundamental AI Research).

In the past month, Meta has aggressively poached AI talent from competitors like OpenAI, Apple, and Google, offering massive compensation packages, some reportedly worth up to $300 million over four years, to build its new Superintelligence Labs led by Alexandr Wang and Nat Friedman.

Meta has hired at least 10 researchers from OpenAI and other top experts as it pushes to lead in advanced AI. But OpenAI CEO Sam Altman isn’t happy about it—he called Meta’s hiring tactics “gross” and said focusing too much on big paydays could hurt teamwork and innovation in the AI world.