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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’m very excited to take up the position of chief scientist for meta super-intelligence labs. Trying ahead to constructing asi [artificial superintelligence] and aligning it to empower folks with the wonderful group right here. Let’s construct!” Zhao wrote in his own Threads post.
“Synthetic superintelligence” is a nebulous time period used within the AI business to explain programs extra highly effective and succesful than any immediately, past even the neatest people, making them tough to regulate.
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Zhao’s sturdy business AI background
Zhao, who beforehand labored at OpenAI, performed a key position within the growth of foundational fashions like GPT-4 and GPT-4o, based on arXiv system playing cards and analysis papers itemizing him as a co-author. He’s additionally identified for his tutorial work on generative fashions and honest representations, with extensively 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 guess 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 guide the superintelligence effort. Former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman additionally joined the group.
The corporate has reportedly provided compensation packages value as a lot as $100 million to $300 million over 4 years to lure high AI expertise, based on a number of studies. 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 pacesetter in AI’s subsequent frontier, repeatedly stating that the corporate plans to “make investments tons of of billions of {dollars} into compute to construct superintelligence” utilizing its personal business-generated capital.
He mentioned the Llama 4 rollout underscored the significance of elite expertise: “You’ll be able to have tons of of 1000’s of GPUs, however in case you don’t have the proper group creating the mannequin, 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 combined reception of Llama 4
Nevertheless, 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.
Inner sources blamed quick rollout timelines and bugs for the problems, however the episode has forged 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, offered his endorsement on X: “Shengjia is without doubt one of the brightest, humblest, and most passionate scientists I do 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 subsequent foundational know-how platform — one that might eclipse the cell web. As Zuckerberg sees it, ASI isn’t a moonshot — it’s the subsequent frontier, and Meta intends to guide.
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