Meta hires Shengjia Zhao as chief scientist of its newly launched Superintelligence Labs, marking a pivotal strategic shift in the company’s quest to build cutting-edge artificial general intelligence. The appointment was confirmed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who emphasized that Shengjia Zhao, a former OpenAI researcher and co‑creator of ChatGPT and GPT‑4, will now oversee the lab’s research agenda and scientific direction. He will work closely with Zuckerberg and Alexandr Wang, Meta’s new Chief AI Officer.

Zhao’s appointment comes as part of an aggressive talent acquisition strategy in which Meta has recruited key researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Safe Superintelligence, and other leading AI institutions. This move underscores Meta’s commitment to closing the gap with competitors in frontier AI development.

In response to public questions about overlapping leadership roles, AI visionary Yann LeCun, Meta’s longtime Chief AI Scientist leading its Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) lab, clarified that his responsibilities remain unchanged. He affirmed that FAIR continues its mission of long-term foundational research and that Zhao’s new role is distinct and complementary. He will now report to Alexandr Wang, but LeCun stressed that his research focus remains firmly on next‑generation AI paradigms.

Zuckerberg has rapidly expanded Meta’s AI infrastructure portfolio, pledging to build several massive data centers—including ‘Prometheus’ (1 GW coming online in 2026) and ‘Hyperion’ (a 5 GW cluster in development)—to power the company’s superintelligence ambitions. These facilities are being designed to rival the scale of entire metropolitan areas.

As part of its massive investment push, Meta has also acquired a significant ownership stake in Scale AI—reportedly $14.3 billion—bringing on board Scale’s founder, Alexandr Wang, as Chief AI Officer. Under this leadership structure, Zhao will serve as Zhao will serve as Chief Scientist of the Superintelligence Labs, LeCun will head FAIR, and Wang will coordinate overall AI strategy.

Meta’s new Superintelligence Labs is being positioned as a separate unit within the company’s broader AI architecture. Its stated mission is to accelerate progress toward personal superintelligence for everyone—a vision Zhanggerberg describes as achievable in the next two to three years. The lab is expected to open-source many of its findings, with Zhao at its helm.