Shengjia Zhao, a prominent AI researcher who was instrumental in building the first version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, has officially been named the Chief Scientist of Meta’s Superintelligence AI division. Zhao, who joined Meta in June 2025, will play a crucial role in leading the tech giant’s efforts to build artificial intelligence models capable of outperforming humans in a variety of complex tasks.
Zhao’s hiring marks a major milestone in Meta’s ambition to dominate the evolving AI landscape. His work at OpenAI included being part of the team that developed the original ChatGPT, and he also contributed to OpenAI's first reasoning model, known as o1, which introduced the widely adopted chain-of-thought reasoning concept now seen across AI labs such as Google’s DeepMind and DeepSeek.
As Chief Scientist, Zhao will report to Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI, who also joined Meta in June and now serves as the company’s Chief AI Officer. According to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Zhao has been leading the new superintelligence lab since its inception and is now being formally recognized in this leadership position.
In a post on Threads, Zuckerberg shared:
“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’ve decided to formalize his leadership role.”
Meta has significantly increased its investment in AI talent acquisition, aiming to close the gap with rivals like OpenAI and Google DeepMind. Over the past two months, the company has hired more than a dozen former OpenAI employees, making Zhao one of the most high-profile additions. Meta had been actively searching for a leader to head the superintelligence unit, and Zhao's appointment ends that long-running quest.
The Superintelligence group is focused on building AI systems that can reason, learn, and adapt beyond human-level capabilities. With Zhao's expertise, Meta aims to accelerate innovation in foundational AI models and reinforce its position in the AI arms race.
Apart from co-authoring the original ChatGPT paper, Zhao’s research has heavily influenced the development of AI reasoning systems. His work on OpenAI’s o1 model helped introduce a new generation of logical reasoning AI frameworks, which are now emulated by top labs around the world.
He was credited as one of more than 20 foundational researchers behind the breakthrough projects that established OpenAI’s lead in large language models (LLMs).
Despite Zhao’s appointment, Meta veteran Yann LeCun will remain the Chief Scientist of FAIR (Facebook AI Research), a separate internal AI division. LeCun, a pioneering AI figure who has been with Meta for over a decade, will continue to play an influential role and will report to Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, according to company insiders.
Conclusion: Meta’s AI Future Looks Promising
With Zhao at the helm of the Superintelligence group and Wang overseeing AI operations, Meta is doubling down on its mission to build artificial general intelligence (AGI) and challenge the supremacy of OpenAI and Google in the rapidly evolving AI sector. The formalization of Zhao’s role is not just symbolic—it represents Meta’s renewed commitment to AI leadership, long-term innovation, and superhuman AI capabilities.