Meta Platforms META.O has named Shengjia Zhao, the co-creator of OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the chief scientist of its recently launched Superintelligence Lab, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Friday.

Zhao, who previously served as a research scientist at OpenAI, co-created several major models including ChatGPT, GPT-4, and OpenAI’s mini models 4.1 and o3.

He also led work on synthetic data. Now, he will be setting the research direction for Meta’s most ambitious AI division and working directly with Zuckerberg and Alexandr Wang, Meta’s Chief AI Officer and the former CEO of Scale AI.

“In this role, Shengjia will set the research agenda and scientific direction for our new lab working directly with me and Alex,” Zuckerberg posted on Threads.

“Shengjia has already pioneered several breakthroughs including a new scaling paradigm and distinguished himself as a leader in the field. I’m looking forward to working closely with him to advance his scientific vision.”

While Zhao’s name first appeared in a June memo listing high-profile hires, Zuckerberg confirmed Friday that Zhao is not only leading the lab but also co-founded it, having been “our lead scientist from day one.”

Zhao’s appointment marks a major move in what has become an AI talent arms race. Meta has been aggressively recruiting top researchers, many from OpenAI, offering lucrative compensation packages and forming partnerships with AI startups.

The strategy comes in the wake of Llama 4’s underwhelming performance and reflects Meta’s efforts to regain ground in the race toward artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Meta Superintelligence Lab is a new division focused on developing foundation models like the Llama family, in addition to long-term AGI goals. It operates independently from FAIR (Fundamental AI Research), Meta’s original AI research group led by deep learning pioneer Yann LeCun.

Zuckerberg has made it clear that Meta intends to pursue “full general intelligence” and open-source its progress—a bold and controversial approach in the AI community.

He also revealed earlier this month that Meta plans to invest “hundreds of billions of dollars” into AI computing infrastructure to power its next-generation models.

“The next few years are going to be very exciting!” Zuckerberg wrote.

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With inputs from Reuters