TLDR: Shengjia Zhao, a key figure in the development of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT-4, has been named the Chief Scientist of Meta’s newly established Superintelligence Lab. This strategic appointment underscores Meta’s aggressive push into advanced artificial intelligence and its ambition to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Meta Platforms has announced the appointment of Shengjia Zhao, a distinguished research scientist and co-creator of OpenAI’s groundbreaking ChatGPT and GPT-4 models, as the Chief Scientist of its recently launched Superintelligence Lab. The move, confirmed by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday, July 26, 2025, signifies a major acceleration in the company’s efforts to advance its artificial intelligence capabilities and pursue artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Zhao brings a wealth of experience from his tenure at OpenAI, where he played a pivotal role in the creation of not only ChatGPT and GPT-4 but also several ‘mini’ models, including 4.1 and o3. He is credited with co-authoring the original ChatGPT paper and was instrumental in developing the o1 reasoning model, which pioneered the influential ‘chain-of-thought’ prompting technique now widely adopted across the AI landscape. Furthermore, Zhao led significant efforts in synthetic data generation, crucial for training large language models (LLMs).
In his new capacity at Meta, Zhao will be responsible for setting the research agenda and scientific direction for the Superintelligence Lab. He will work directly with CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Alexandr Wang, Meta’s Chief AI Officer, who joined the company in June after Meta took a substantial stake in his startup, Scale AI. Zhao’s mandate includes strategizing for Meta’s foundational models, particularly the Llama series, and unifying the company’s frontier AI research efforts.
Mark Zuckerberg expressed his enthusiasm for the appointment in a Threads post, stating, “In this role, Shengjia will set the research agenda and scientific direction for our new lab working directly with me and Alex.” He further added, “Now that our recruiting is going well, and our team is coming together, we have decided to formalise his leadership role.” Zuckerberg also lauded Zhao, noting, “Shengjia has already pioneered several breakthroughs including a new scaling paradigm and distinguished himself as a leader in the field. I’m looking forward to working closely with him to advance his scientific vision.”
Alexandr Wang echoed this sentiment on X, stating, “We are excited to announce that @shengjia_zhao will be the Chief Scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs! Shengjia is a brilliant scientist who most recently pioneered a new scaling paradigm in his research. He will lead our scientific direction for our team.”
Meta’s Superintelligence Lab, unveiled in June 2025, is central to the company’s ambitious goal of building ‘full general intelligence’ and releasing its work as open source. This new lab operates independently from FAIR, Meta’s long-established AI research division led by deep learning pioneer Yann LeCun, who now reports to Wang. Zhao himself is noted as a co-founder of the Superintelligence Lab.
Zhao’s appointment is a significant win in the ongoing ‘talent arms race’ within the tech industry. Meta has been aggressively recruiting top researchers from rivals like OpenAI, Apple, Google, and Anthropic, offering highly lucrative compensation packages and striking startup deals. Zhao is among more than a dozen leading researchers who have recently transitioned to Meta, including Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, and Hongyu Ren from OpenAI, and Apple AI scientists Tom Gunter and Mark Lee. This hiring spree is complemented by Meta’s multi-billion-dollar investment in AI data centers across the U.S.
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Academically, Zhao holds a PhD in computer science from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University, further solidifying his credentials in the field of artificial intelligence.
