Meta names former OpenAI researcher Shengjia Zhao as Chief scientist for superintelligence lab

Meta Platforms has appointed Shengjia Zhao, a former OpenAI researcher and co-author of the original ChatGPT paper, as the Chief Scientist of its new Superintelligence AI group, the company confirmed Friday (July 25).

Zhao, who joined Meta in June, was a key contributor to OpenAI’s early breakthroughs, including the development of ChatGPT and the company’s first reasoning model, known as o1. The model helped set off a new wave of “chain-of-thought” AI systems adopted by companies such as Google and DeepSeek.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Zhao’s formal appointment in a post on Threads, calling him “our lead scientist from day one.” Zuckerberg added: “Now that our recruiting is going well and our team is coming together, we have decided to formalize his leadership role.”


Zhao will report to Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI, who joined Meta in June as Chief AI Officer. Wang is leading Meta’s efforts in building artificial general intelligence (AGI), AI that can think and reason at or beyond human capability.

Aggressive AI push

The move comes amid Meta’s aggressive recruitment campaign in the AI sector. Over the past two months, the company has hired more than a dozen researchers from OpenAI, Apple, Google, and Anthropic. That includes two top Apple AI scientists, Tom Gunter and Mark Lee, according to Bloomberg.

Meta launched the Superintelligence Lab in June 2025 as part of its renewed focus on developing advanced AI models. The lab is separate from Meta’s long-standing AI research group FAIR, which will continue to be led by Yann LeCun, who now reports to Wang.

Talent and tensions

Meta’s recent hires have drawn attention for the size of the compensation packages involved. Some reports suggested offers exceeding $100 million, although the company has denied rumors of higher figures, including claims of $300 million deals.

Meta’s current open-source model, LLaMA 4, has not yet matched the capabilities of OpenAI’s GPT-4 or Google’s Gemini models. The company is expected to release a more advanced model, internally codenamed “Behemoth,” later this year.

Zuckerberg expressed optimism about the lab’s future, saying, “Together we are building an elite, talent-dense team that has the resources and long-term focus to push the frontiers of superintelligence research.”