Meta is making headlines again, this time by bringing one of the most influential minds in artificial intelligence into its core leadership. Shengjia Zhao, a key architect behind ChatGPT and the powerful GPT-4 models, has officially joined Meta as the Chief Scientist of its Superintelligence Lab. This move comes just as the tech giant intensifies efforts to rival OpenAI and other AI leaders in the race for artificial general intelligence.
Announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a post on Threads, Zhao’s appointment is not just symbolic. He will work directly with Zuckerberg and Meta’s Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang to shape the lab’s scientific direction and research priorities. Wang himself is a recent hire from Scale AI, marking Meta’s growing strategy of acquiring top-tier talent from emerging and established players alike.
Zhao is no stranger to innovation. During his time at OpenAI, he co-developed not only the original ChatGPT but also several key models including GPT-4.1 and the lightweight o3 mini models. His move to Meta is a bold indicator of how seriously the company is pursuing its long-term goal of building full general intelligence systems that go far beyond chatbots and search tools.
In recent weeks, Meta has hired several researchers from OpenAI, hinting at a broader talent shift within the AI community. Some of these researchers are now part of Meta’s newly launched Superintelligence Lab, which was created to unify its work on the Llama family of models and future AI systems. The lab will operate independently from Meta’s established AI division FAIR, which is led by renowned researcher Yann LeCun.
While Meta’s Llama 4 received mixed responses earlier this year, the formation of the Superintelligence Lab and Zhao’s leadership suggest that the company is gearing up for a far more ambitious second act. Zuckerberg has been vocal about Meta’s intention to build general intelligence and keep its work open source, a philosophy that has sparked both excitement and concern within the AI world.
This latest move signals that Meta is no longer just experimenting with AI. It is assembling a dream team of experts to build something that could rival or surpass current models, and Zhao’s vision will be critical to that mission.
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