Meta has appointed Shengjia Zhao, a former OpenAI researcher and co‑creator of GPT‑4, because the Chief Scientist of its newly created Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL).
The announcement was made Friday by Mark Zuckerberg on Threads, noting Zhao will lead the lab’s scientific agenda alongside him and Alexandr Wang, the previous CEO of Scale AI who Meta not too long ago introduced onboard as Chief AI Officer.
“I am very excited to take up the role of chief scientist for meta super-intelligence labs. Looking forward to building asi [artificial superintelligence] and aligning it to empower people with the amazing team here. Let’s build!” Zhao wrote in his personal Threads submit.
“Artificial superintelligence” is a nebulous time period used within the AI business to explain techniques extra highly effective and succesful than any right now, past even the neatest people, making them troublesome to regulate.
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Zhao’s robust industrial AI background
Zhao, who beforehand labored at OpenAI, performed a key function within the improvement of foundational fashions like GPT-4 and GPT-4o, in keeping with arXiv system playing cards and analysis papers itemizing him as a co-author. He’s additionally identified for his educational work on generative fashions and honest representations, with broadly cited papers in venues like NeurIPS, ICML, and ICLR.
Zhao joins Meta amid a high-stakes hiring blitz throughout the AI business. Over the previous few months, Meta has poached researchers from OpenAI, Apple, Google, and Anthropic as a part of a multibillion-dollar wager on superintelligence as CNN reported.
Meta not too long ago invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI, buying a 49% stake and bringing on Wang to steer the superintelligence effort. Former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman additionally joined the workforce.
The corporate has reportedly provided compensation packages price as a lot as $100 million to $300 million over 4 years to lure high AI expertise, in keeping with a number of reviews. One declare from a rival AI startup founder alleged Meta provided $1.25 billion over 4 years—roughly $312 million per yr—to a single candidate who declined.
Different insiders say Meta’s most senior AI scientists could also be receiving $10 million+ per yr, whereas first-year comp for some new hires reportedly reached $100 million.
Aspirations of main the AI frontier
Zuckerberg has made no secret of his ambition to make Meta a frontrunner in AI’s subsequent frontier, repeatedly stating that the corporate plans to “invest hundreds of billions of dollars into compute to build superintelligence” utilizing its personal business-generated capital.
He mentioned the Llama 4 rollout underscored the significance of elite expertise: “You can have hundreds of thousands of GPUs, but if you don’t have the right team developing the model, it doesn’t matter.”
Meta’s basic AI analysis group (FAIR), nonetheless led by acclaimed scientist Yann LeCun, will stay separate from the brand new lab.
The creation of Meta Superintelligence Labs indicators a extra product- and mission-focused arm of Meta’s AI efforts, centered on constructing and aligning ASI with human pursuits.
Making up for the blended reception of Llama 4
Nonetheless, Meta’s push into superintelligence has come on the heels of a bumpy rollout of its newest open-source basis fashions.
The corporate launched its Llama 4 mannequin household in April 2025, positioning it as a leap ahead in multimodal reasoning and long-context understanding. However the launch has struggled to realize traction amid the rise of highly effective Chinese language open-source rivals like DeepSeek and Qwen.
Meta confronted public criticism from researchers and builders who cited poor real-world efficiency, confusion round benchmark outcomes, and inconsistent high quality throughout deployments.
Some accused the corporate of “benchmark gamesmanship” and utilizing unreleased optimized variations of Llama 4 to spice up public notion—a declare Meta has denied.
Inside sources blamed quick rollout timelines and bugs for the problems, however the episode has solid a shadow over Meta’s generative AI credibility simply because it embarks on its most formidable effort but.
Jim Fan, a former Stanford colleague of Zhao and now Nvidia’s Director of Robotics and Distinguished Scientist, provided his endorsement on X: “Shengjia is one of the brightest, humblest, and most passionate scientists I know. Very bullish on MSL!”
The transfer underscores Meta’s technique of spending aggressively now to safe a dominant place in what it views as the following foundational know-how platform — one that might eclipse the cellular web. As Zuckerberg sees it, ASI isn’t a moonshot — it’s the following frontier, and Meta intends to steer.
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