Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Shengjia Zhao, known for co-creating ChatGPT and contributing to the development of GPT-4 and other foundational models, will now serve as the chief scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs. This marks a pivotal addition to Meta’s rapidly expanding artificial intelligence division, which is attracting top talent and securing significant investment.
Zhao was initially mentioned among a group of high-profile hires in a June memo, but Zuckerberg clarified that Zhao has played a central role since the lab’s inception and is its scientific co-founder. Working alongside Zuckerberg and Meta’s newly appointed chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang—former CEO of Scale AI—Zhao will help drive Meta’s strategy in foundational model development and advanced AI research.
According to Zuckerberg, Zhao has already delivered several key breakthroughs, including a novel scaling paradigm that distinguishes him as a leading figure in the field. His expertise in large language models, synthetic data, and scalable architectures makes him a valuable asset as Meta intensifies its push into AI. Previously at OpenAI, Zhao contributed to the development of ChatGPT, GPT-4, 4.1, o3, and also led efforts on synthetic data—critical elements in training large models efficiently.
Meta Superintelligence Labs was established to lead the company’s efforts in building and improving large-scale AI systems. This includes further work on the Llama series of open-source language models, as well as broader foundational AI initiatives across the company. The lab is positioned as the core hub for innovation in Meta’s AI strategy, linking research and product development with scalable infrastructure and new AI capabilities.
Zuckerberg has signaled an unprecedented level of commitment to AI by stating that Meta will invest “hundreds of billions of dollars” into compute infrastructure over the coming years. The recent $14 billion investment in Scale AI and ongoing recruitment of AI researchers demonstrate the company’s long-term ambition to lead in artificial general intelligence and frontier model development.
The appointment of Zhao is viewed as a strong indicator that Meta is not only competing for talent at the highest levels but is also aiming to shape the direction of the AI landscape. With this leadership structure in place, Meta appears poised to make major strides in the next wave of artificial intelligence.
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