Meta Poaches Top OpenAI Researcher for New AI Lab

Meta Appoints OpenAI Veteran to Lead Superintelligence Lab

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has officially announced a major leadership appointment for the company's new AI division, naming former OpenAI researcher Shengjia Zhao as the Chief Scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL).

"I’m excited to share that Shengjia Zhao will be the Chief Scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs," Zuckerberg stated on Threads. "Shengjia co-founded the new lab and has been our lead scientist from day one. Now that our recruiting is going well and our team is coming together, we have decided to formalize his leadership role."

Zhao brings a formidable track record from OpenAI, where he was a key contributor to groundbreaking projects like ChatGPT, GPT-4, and the company's first AI reasoning model, o1.

A Strategic Push into AI Reasoning

At MSL, Zhao will report to Alexandr Wang, the former Scale AI CEO tasked with leading the superintelligence unit. While Wang's appointment was seen by some as unconventional due to his non-research background, Zhao's deep scientific expertise provides a powerful complement.

Zuckerberg highlighted that Zhao pioneered a "new scaling paradigm," likely referencing his foundational work on OpenAI's reasoning model, o1. This area is a key strategic focus for MSL, as Meta aims to develop its own competitor in the AI reasoning space. The lab will also continue work on its open-source Llama family of models and other fundamental AI research.

Fueling Growth with Top Talent and Massive Investment

Zhao's appointment is the centerpiece of a broader, aggressive recruitment drive for MSL. He is one of several high-profile researchers Meta has successfully poached from OpenAI, including Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, and Hongyu Ren. The company has also reportedly enticed top talent from competitors like Google DeepMind with compensation packages valued at over $100 million.

To power these ambitions, Meta is making a colossal financial commitment. Zuckerberg recently stated that the company will invest "hundreds of billions of dollars" into AI compute infrastructure.

A key piece of this infrastructure is Prometheus, Meta’s 1-gigawatt cloud computing cluster in Ohio, expected to be online by 2026. This facility will give MSL the immense power needed to train competitive, frontier-level AI models, positioning Meta as a dominant force in the race for superintelligence.