Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has appointed Shengjia Zhao, a key architect behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT, as Chief Scientist of the company’s newly launched Superintelligence Labs — a bold move in its escalating push into advanced artificial intelligence.
Zhao, who played a critical role in developing ChatGPT and the GPT-4 family of models, will now co-lead Meta’s next-generation AI research alongside Alexander Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI. The announcement, confirmed by Zuckerberg on Friday, follows a months-long wave of strategic hires and large-scale investments aimed at positioning Meta as a global leader in artificial general intelligence (AGI).
“Shengjia has led several breakthroughs, including a new approach to scaling models,” Zuckerberg wrote on his social media platform. “He has established himself as a leader in the field, and I look forward to working closely with him to bring his scientific vision to life.”
Zhao’s appointment, first mentioned in Meta’s internal June hiring memo, has now been publicly confirmed as part of a broader organizational shift. He has been involved with Superintelligence Labs “since day one,” according to Zuckerberg.
The newly formed Meta Superintelligence Labs is expected to serve as the cornerstone of the company’s foundational AI efforts, which include developing high-performance open-source models like the LLaMA series and scaling Meta’s internal research capacity to compete directly with firms such as OpenAI and Google DeepMind.
Zhao’s contributions at OpenAI were central to the evolution of transformer-based language models. He worked on ChatGPT, GPT-4, and compact models like GPT-4.1 and O3, while also leading OpenAI’s Synthetic Data Division — a crucial element in training AI at scale. His work has been widely recognized within the research community for enhancing both the efficiency and capability of large language models.
Meta’s ambitions in AI have intensified in recent months. The company has committed billions to building the infrastructure necessary to support AGI development. In early 2025, Zuckerberg declared plans to invest “hundreds of billions of dollars” over the next decade into computing infrastructure, talent, and model development.
The appointment of Zhao comes on the heels of Meta’s $14 billion investment in Scale AI and underscores its readiness to attract the most influential minds in the AI field. The formation of the Superintelligence Labs suggests a direct challenge to OpenAI’s dominance and a signal that Meta is transitioning from a consumer tech company into a deep-tech innovator.
As Zhao takes the scientific helm of Superintelligence Labs, observers will be watching closely to see whether Meta can convert its resources, talent, and infrastructure into breakthroughs in artificial general intelligence — a vision that, while still speculative, is fast becoming the next major frontier in technology.
