Meta Appoints Shengjia Zhao as Chief Scientist of New Superintelligence Lab

Meta has appointed Shengjia Zhao, a former lead scientist at OpenAI and co-creator of ChatGPT and GPT-4, as the chief scientist of its newly established Superintelligence Lab. He will work under Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, who joined Meta in June after the company’s major investment in Scale AI.

We are excited to announce that @shengjia_zhao will be the Chief Scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs!

Shengjia is a brilliant scientist who most recently pioneered a new scaling paradigm in his research. He will lead our scientific direction for our team.

Let's go 🚀 pic.twitter.com/D93KQWIvFl

— Alexandr Wang (@alexandr_wang) July 25, 2025

Zhao’s role includes setting the lab’s scientific agenda and steering its research efforts toward artificial general intelligence (AGI). 

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Shengjia will set the research agenda and scientific direction for the new lab, working directly with him and Wang.

“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 formalise his leadership role,” he said.

Zuckerberg further clarified that the lab operates independently from Meta’s FAIR research division, led by Yann LeCun.

This move comes amid Meta’s aggressive AI expansion, which includes a $14.3 billion stake in Scale AI, major infrastructure projects like the Prometheus and Hyperion data center clusters, and recruitment of top researchers from OpenAI, Google, DeepMind, Anthropic, and Apple.

Industry observers see Zhao’s hiring as a significant move in the escalating AI talent war. Compensation packages offered to top hires reportedly span eight to nine figures, some expiring within days.