Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Friday that former OpenAI researcher Shengjia Zhao will lead research efforts at the company’s new AI unit, Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL). Zhao played a key role in several of OpenAI’s major breakthroughs, including ChatGPT, GPT-4, and the company’s first AI reasoning model, o1.
In a post on Threads, Zuckerberg shared his excitement about Zhao’s appointment as Chief Scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs. He noted that Zhao co-founded the lab and has been the lead scientist from the beginning. With the team now coming together, his leadership role has been formalized.
Zhao will define the research agenda for MSL under the guidance of Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI, who was recently hired to lead the new unit. Wang, though not a researcher himself, brings leadership experience, while Zhao’s expertise in frontier AI models strengthens the team.
Meta has aggressively recruited top talent to build MSL, pulling researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Safe Superintelligence, Apple, and Anthropic. The company has also reassigned researchers from its existing Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) lab and generative AI unit.
Zuckerberg highlighted Zhao’s contributions, including pioneering a new scaling paradigm, likely referencing his work on OpenAI’s reasoning model, o1. Since Meta currently lacks a competitor to o1, AI reasoning models are a key focus for MSL.
In June, reports confirmed Zhao’s move to Meta alongside three other influential OpenAI researchers: Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, and Hongyu Ren. The company also hired Trapit Bansal, another OpenAI researcher who collaborated with Zhao on AI reasoning models, as well as three employees from OpenAI’s Zurich office specializing in multimodality.
To ensure MSL’s success, Zuckerberg has personally engaged in recruiting efforts, reaching out to researchers directly and hosting prospects at his Lake Tahoe estate. Meta has reportedly offered some candidates eight- and nine-figure compensation packages, with some deals requiring quick decisions.
Meta has also expanded its cloud computing infrastructure to support the massive training runs needed for frontier AI models. By 2026, Zhao and MSL’s team will have access to Meta’s 1-gigawatt cloud computing cluster, Prometheus, located in Ohio. This facility will provide unprecedented computational power, enabling Meta to compete in AI development at scale.
With Zhao’s appointment, Meta now has two chief AI scientists, including Yann LeCun, who leads the FAIR lab. While FAIR focuses on long-term AI research, MSL is positioned to drive near-term advancements. How these units collaborate remains to be seen, but Meta now boasts a strong leadership team to rival OpenAI and Google.