Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has appointed former OpenAI researcher Shengjia Zhao as Chief Scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), the company’s ambitious new AI division focused on frontier model development and advanced reasoning systems. Zhao, who co-founded the lab and has led research efforts since its inception, previously contributed to major OpenAI breakthroughs, including ChatGPT, GPT-4, and its first reasoning model, o1.
Zhao will guide MSL’s research agenda under Alexandr Wang, the former Scale AI CEO tapped to lead the unit despite lacking a research background. The pairing of Wang’s operational expertise with Zhao’s deep technical credentials strengthens Meta’s bid to compete with leading AI players such as OpenAI and Google DeepMind.
Meta has aggressively recruited top AI talent from OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic, Apple, and its own FAIR research group, offering lucrative compensation packages and even personal outreach from Zuckerberg. The company has also invested heavily in cloud infrastructure, including its upcoming 1-gigawatt Prometheus computing cluster in Ohio, expected to power massive AI model training runs by 2026.
Zhao’s appointment adds a second chief AI scientist alongside Yann LeCun, who continues to lead Meta’s FAIR lab focused on long-term research. While FAIR explores future AI technologies, MSL is tasked with building cutting-edge, deployable models, including AI reasoning systems where Meta currently lags competitors.
The addition of Zhao and other high-profile hires positions Meta to accelerate the development of powerful AI models, supported by significant infrastructure and financial backing. How Meta’s multiple AI divisions will collaborate remains unclear, but the company now has a formidable leadership team in place as the race for AI superintelligence intensifies.
