Facebook co-founder andMetaCEOMark Zuckerberghas announced thatShengjia Zhao, co-creator ofOpenAI’sChatGPT, will serve as the chief scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs. Zhao was one of several strategic hires in Zuckerberg’s multi-billion-dollar hiring spree and investment in artificial intelligence (AI).Shengjia Zhao, whose name was initially listed among new hires in a June memo, was revealed by Zuckerberg as a co-founder of Meta Superintelligence Labs and its “lead scientist from day one.” “Now that our recruiting is going well and our team is coming together, we have decided to formalize his leadership role,” he added.Shengjia Zhao will report directly to Zuckerberg andAlexandr Wang, the former CEO ofScale AI, who is now Meta’s chief AI officer.”Shengjia has already pioneered several breakthroughs including a new scaling paradigm and distinguished himself as a leader in the field,” Mark Zuckerberg shared in a social media post, adding, “I’m looking forward to working closely with him to advance his scientific vision.””The next few years are going to be very exciting!” Mark Zuckerberg concluded in his post.

Zhao co-created ChatGPT, GPT-4, mini models, 4.1 and o3

In addition to co-creating ChatGPT, Zhao has played an instrumental role in developingGPT-4, mini models, 4.1, and o3, as per CNBC. He also previously led synthetic data efforts at the AI research company.Meanwhile, Wang said on X, “We are excited to announce that @shengjia_zhao will be the Chief Scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs! Shengjia is a brilliant scientist who most recently pioneered a new scaling paradigm in his research. He will lead our scientific direction for our team.”

Meta spends billions into hiring and acquiring AI talent

In recent months, Meta has spent billions of dollars hiring AI talents from Google, OpenAI, Apple and Anthropic. He also acquired ScaleAI for $14 billion and made its CEO Meta’s chief AI officer. Zuckerberg also said the company will spend hundreds of billions of dollars on building huge AI data centres in the US.