On Friday, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, revealed that Shengjia Zhao, the co‑creator of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, has joined as chief scientist for Meta Superintelligence Labs.
On Threads, Zuckerberg praised Zhao’s contributions saying “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.”
Zhao will work directly with Zuckerberg and Alexandr Wang, the former Scale AI CEO who’s now Meta’s chief AI officer.
In recent weeks, Zuckerberg has rapidly boosted Meta’s AI team, with a $14 billion commitment to Scale AI. He unveiled Meta Superintelligence Labs in June, bringing together leading researchers and engineers.
Zuckerberg’s June memo credits Zhao with co‑creating ChatGPT, contributing significantly to GPT‑4’s development, including its compact variants 4.1 and o3, and heading OpenAI’s synthetic data initiatives before his move to Meta.
Although Zhao appeared alongside other recruits in that memo, CNBC reported that Zuckerberg clarified on Friday that Zhao actually co‑founded the lab and “has been our lead scientist from day one.”
Within Meta Superintelligence Labs, teams will concentrate on foundational AI architectures like the open‑source Llama series, alongside various product builds and core research projects.
Is Meta finally winning over OpenAI talent?
Earlier in July, Zuckerberg revealed that Meta intends to dedicate “hundreds of billions of dollars” to its AI infrastructure, adding that “the next few years are going to be very exciting!”
This latest hiring surge follows the underwhelmed developer response to the Llama 4 models released in April, prompting a strategic overhaul to more effectively challenge rivals such as OpenAI and Google.
Altman says Meta offered $100 million to his employees. Meta denies it.
WIRED reported that Meta has made at least ten of these offers to OpenAI employees. One senior researcher was asked to be chief scientist but turned it down, according to people involved. They also said the equity in the deal vests right away in the first year.
“That’s about how much it would take for me to go work at Meta,” said an OpenAI staffer who spoke on condition of anonymity. Others said they compared the financial incentives with the chance to shape projects at Meta versus OpenAI, with several feeling their contributions would be greater at OpenAI.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone challenged the figures. “These statements are untrue—the size and structure of these compensation packages have been misrepresented,” he said. “Some people have chosen to greatly exaggerate what’s happening for their own purposes.”
A senior Meta engineer confirmed a salary of roughly $850,000 per year—substantial but small compared with the new offers. Engineers one level above (E7) average about $1.54 million annually, based on user data from Levels.FYI.
Recently, on “Lenny’s Podcast”, Anthropic cofounder Benjamin Mann revealed that his team wasn’t sways by Meta’s generous recruitment packages.
He emphasized that Anthropic’s workforce is driven by the company’s purpose. “It’s not a hard choice,” Mann said, adding that while other AI firms lost people to big paydays, Anthropic has held onto its experts.
Mann added that huge offers could be reasonable based on individual circumstances. His comments underscore a fierce talent war among leading tech firms, with signing bonuses reportedly climbing as high as $100 million. “I’m pretty sure it’s real,” Mann added.
Whether or not Zuckerberg has made big offers to Altman’s employees, in the past few years, half of OpenAI’s safety team has left. Last year, former researcher Daniel Kokotajlo told Fortune that “people who are primarily focused on thinking about AGI safety and preparedness are being increasingly marginalized.”
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Source: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/chief-scientist-of-new-meta-ai-lab/