Meta Appoints Shengjia Zhao as Lead Scientist for New AI Lab
San Francisco, CA – Meta has officially appointed Shengjia Zhao as the lead scientist for its newly established AI research lab, a move signaling a meaningful step in the company’s intensified efforts to compete in the artificial intelligence sector. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, announced the formalization of Zhao’s leadership role, highlighting his contributions as a co-founder and lead scientist since the lab’s inception.
Zuckerberg praised Zhao’s pioneering work, noting a “new scaling paradigm” and his distinguished leadership in the field.”Now that our recruiting is going well and our team is coming together, we have decided to formalize his leadership role,” Zuckerberg stated in a post. He added, “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.”
This appointment comes as Meta, under Zuckerberg’s direction, has been actively working to regain a leading position in the AI race. Following a lukewarm reception to its Llama model releases in April, Meta has pursued a multi-pronged strategy. This includes a substantial $14 billion acquisition of Scale AI and the creation of Meta Superintelligence Labs, which has been actively recruiting top talent from prominent AI companies such as openai, Google, and Apple.
In parallel, zuckerberg confirmed that Yann LeCun, a long-standing AI researcher and Meta’s Chief Scientist, will remain with the company. LeCun will continue his role as chief scientist for FAIR (Fundamental AI Research), Meta’s internal AI research group. LeCun himself clarified his position on LinkedIn, stating, “My role as Chief Scientist for FAIR has always been focused on long-term AI research and building next AI paradigms. My role and FAIR’s mission remain unchanged.”
Shengjia Zhao joins Meta from OpenAI, where he was part of a group of employees who transitioned to Meta in recent months. He is recognized as a co-author of the original ChatGPT research paper and played a key role in OpenAI’s first reasoning model,o1. The o1 model is credited with popularizing the “chain-of-thought” reasoning approach, influencing subsequent models developed by companies like Google, DeepSeek, and xAI.Prior to his move to Meta, Zhao managed synthetic data at OpenAI. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University and a phd in computer Science from Stanford University.