Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Friday. Shengjia Zhao, a former OpenAI researcher, will be the Chief Scientist of the newly formed Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL). Zhao previously played a key role in creating major AI projects like ChatGPT, GPT 4, and the advanced reasoning model o1.
Zhao will work under Alexandr Wang, Meta’s recently appointed Chief AI Officer, to guide the lab’s research goals and direction.
Meta Superintelligence Labs brings together top researchers from organizations like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Apple, and Anthropic.
Currently, Meta lacks a system comparable to OpenAI’s O1 reasoning engine. Zhao’s appointment is expected to help close this gap by building cutting-edge AI reasoning models.
To support this ambitious vision, Meta is offering massive compensation packages worth eight or nine figures with deadlines that force quick decisions.
Beyond talent, Meta is investing in large-scale AI infrastructure. By 2026, researchers at MSL will gain access to Prometheus, a massive 1-gigawatt AI training cluster located in Ohio. This facility is one of the largest of its kind and will power the complex training required to develop advanced AI models.
FAIR, led by AI pioneer Yann LeCun, will concentrate on long-term research, with results expected in 5 to 10 years. In contrast, MSL primarily focuses on achieving near-term goals, particularly in the field of artificial general intelligence (AGI). On the other hand, although both labs aim to enhance Meta’s AI capabilities, the collaboration lacks clear definition.
