Meta announces ChatGPT creator as chief scientist. Meta chief scientist Mark Zuckerberg has officially appointed Shengjia Zhao, a former lead scientist at OpenAI and co-creator of ChatGPT, as chief scientist for Meta Superintelligence Lab, establishing him in a leading role to help the company develop its next-wave AI research. 

Zhao has been at Meta since June and will be working directly with Zuckerberg and Alexandr Wang, Chief AI Officer, helping to set the scientific agenda for the new lab focused on developing artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Why This is Important (Who, What, When, Where, Why, How) 

Who

  • Shengjia Zhao: AI researcher, co-creator of ChatGPT and GPT-4 at OpenAI. 
  • Mark Zuckerberg: Meta CEO who announced the appointment. 
  • Alexandr Wang: Metas Chief AI Officer and co-founder of Scale AI. 

What and When 

  • On July 25, 2025, Zhao was formally named Chief Scientist at Meta’s new Superintelligence Lab. 

Where

Meta Superintelligence Labs is located in Menlo Park, California, and operates autonomously of its FAIR research division, led by Yann LeCun. 

Why

  • The hire only further accelerates Meta’s ambitions in AI leadership, especially after the mixed reception to Llama 4. 
  • Zhao joins a talent blitz war-torn by AI, where Meta paid elite researchers opulent packages to join from OpenAI, DeepMind, and more. 

How 

  • Zhao will be utilizing and formalizing research in the AI-startup ecosystem he co-founded and has been the lead scientist “from day 1” in Superintelligence Lab. 
  • Zhao reports to Wang and Facebook AI pioneer Yann LeCun, retains his role leading FAIR with an unchanged long-term AI research focus. 

Zhao is at the helm of Meta’s drive to achieve artificial general intelligence

Zhao is responsible for co-creating ChatGPT, GPT-4, GPT-4.1, and o3 mini-models and synthetic data research at OpenAI. 

Meta’s Superintelligence Lab now acts as the integrative unit acting combining FAIR alongside existing product teams and foundation model work under Zhao and Wang’s direction.

Meta gets aggressive AI talent strategy

OpenAI defections & compensation controversies

Meta has been strategically assembling a top-tier AI brain trust by recruiting renowned scientists from companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic, and DeepMind—allegedly offering compensation deals totaling over $100 million. Meta partially denied those assertions as exaggerated

Analysts, like former head of Google HR Laszlo Bock, maintain that such offers are seen strategically.  Eventually, an investment pain for a remarkable upside.

DeepMind’s CEO Demis Hassabis called Meta’s actions rational.  They need to catch up in AI capabilities, others who were mentioned at Meta argued that mission over pay is important for retaining talent.

Meta AI organizational hierarchy 

Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL) was formed on June 30, 2025, based in Menlo Park, and subsumed FAIR and AI product teams. 

Yann LeCun remains at the forefront of FAIR’s long-horizon AI research, currently positioned within the leadership orbit of Alexandre Wang.

Zhao leads scientific research while Wang manages coordination and strategy.

What this means for the future of AGI

Meta’s official recognition as a serious AI player, with Zhao leading research and Wang leading operations and scale. 

This announcement reinforces Meta’s intention to develop open-source AGI tools and foundation models like competitors OpenAI and Anthropic. 

Stakeholder confidence is heightened by identifying leadership, as well as their transparency through Zuckerberg’s Threads and public messaging. 

Evergreen angles for ongoing traffic 

Whether you’re tracking Meta’s strategic AI playbook, the global tug-of-war for top AI minds, or the escalating contest between OpenAI and Meta, this piece offers durable relevance.

Think of future stories and news-oriented content around what MSL releases, Zhao-led breakthroughs, and comparative ranking/s – looking at where they fit with the OpenAI roadmap.

Experts Weigh In 

Laszlo Bock, former VP of Human Resources at Google: “It is both strategic and rational in the long-term to offer $100 million to secure super talented AI folks.” 

Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind: “This makes sense strategically for Meta to act. They are behind, and recruiting the best researchers makes a lot of sense.” 

FAQs 

1. Who is Shengjia Zhao? 

Shengjia Zhao is a former research scientist at OpenAI and a co-creator of ChatGPT, GPT-4, GPT-4.1, and o3 mini-models. 

2. What is Meta’s Superintelligence Lab? 

Superintelligence Lab is Meta’s new AI division launched on June 30, 2025, that focuses on cutting-edge research on AGI, along with the development of the core foundational model on which AGI will be built. 

3. How will Superintelligence Lab differ from FAIR? 

FAIR, still headed by Yann LeCun, continues down paths of long-term theoretical research. The new Superintelligence unit is Zhao-led and is broader in scope, with Wang heading the basic research. 

4. Why did Meta decide to hire Zhao? 

Meta realized that their Llama 4 was going over like a lead balloon, and they felt the need to take full advantage of the opportunity access to talent and infrastructure affords them to push forward on the AI front. 

5. What is the effect on OpenAI and the broader AI industry? 

This development increases the pace toward Meta’s ambitions with AI and pushes the “talent wars” forward while increasing the stakes for OpenAI and other competing entities in the industry. 

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