In a bold move to establish itself as a dominant force in the AI race, Meta has officially appointed former OpenAI researcher Shengjia Zhao as the Chief Scientist of its newly-formed Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL). The announcement was made by CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Threads this past Friday, confirming Zhao’s leadership in what is shaping up to be one of the most ambitious AI ventures to date.
A Powerhouse Team: Zhao and Wang Lead the Charge
Shengjia Zhao, who played a pivotal role in developing OpenAI’s biggest breakthroughs including GPT-4, ChatGPT, and the groundbreaking AI reasoning model o1, has been leading MSL’s research from day one. Now, with his position formally recognized, he is expected to set the lab’s research agenda under the leadership of Alexandr Wang, former CEO of Scale AI.
While Wang’s lack of a research background initially raised eyebrows, the pairing with Zhao — a respected AI scientist known for pioneering a new “scaling paradigm” — provides a balanced leadership dynamic. Together, they are expected to drive Meta’s push into frontier AI and superintelligent reasoning models.
A Talent War in Full Swing
Meta has been aggressively recruiting talent from top AI labs, pulling in elite researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Apple, Safe Superintelligence, and Anthropic. Among the new recruits are OpenAI veterans Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, Hongyu Ren, and Trapit Bansal, as well as multimodal experts from OpenAI’s Zurich office.
To win this talent war, Meta has reportedly offered eight- and nine-figure compensation packages, often with “exploding offers” that expire within days. Zuckerberg himself has been personally involved, even inviting top talent to his Lake Tahoe estate to make the pitch.
Infrastructure to Match Ambition
To support the massive training runs needed to develop next-gen AI models, Meta is significantly increasing its investment in cloud computing. By 2026, Zhao and his team will have access to Prometheus, Meta’s 1-gigawatt AI training cluster located in Ohio. This powerful infrastructure — enough to power 750,000 homes — will place Meta among the few tech companies capable of training true frontier AI models at scale.
Meta’s Multi-Pronged AI Strategy
With Zhao now leading MSL and Yann LeCun continuing to head Meta’s FAIR lab, the company has two major AI powerhouses under one roof. While FAIR focuses on long-term research for the next 5–10 years, MSL is built for the near-term race to AI superintelligence.
How these units will coordinate remains an open question, but the strategic divide suggests Meta is hedging its bets — investing in both future-forward innovation and immediate, high-stakes AI breakthroughs.
Final Thoughts
Meta’s appointment of Shengjia Zhao as Chief Scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs is more than a headline — it’s a signal. The company is all-in on AI, and it’s assembling one of the most formidable teams in the world to challenge the dominance of OpenAI and Google.
With a high-powered research team, unprecedented infrastructure, and billions in investment, Meta is positioning itself to be at the forefront of the next era of artificial intelligence.