Meta has appointed Shengjia Zhao, one of the original developers behind OpenAI's ChatGPT, as the chief scientist for its newly set up Meta Superintelligence Labs, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced.

This appointment is part of Zuckerberg's aggressive strategy to recruit top AI talent, which has involved substantial financial investments including a $14 billion commitment to Scale AI. 

The Meta Superintelligence Labs was announced in June as a specialized division bringing together leading researchers and engineers in artificial intelligence.

While Zhao was mentioned among new recruits in the initial June announcement, Zuckerberg clarified on Friday that Zhao actually helped establish the lab and has been serving as its primary scientist since its inception. 

In his new role, Zhao will collaborate directly with Zuckerberg and Alexandr Wang, Scale AI's former chief executive, who now holds the position of Meta's chief AI officer.

Zuckerberg praised Zhao's contributions to the field, highlighting his development of innovative scaling approaches and his emergence as a prominent figure in AI research. Beyond his work on ChatGPT, Zhao contributed to developing OpenAI's GPT-4 model, smaller-scale models, versions 4.1 and o3, and previously oversaw synthetic data initiatives at the company.

"Shengjia has already pioneered several breakthroughs including a new scaling paradigm and distinguished himself as a leader in the field," Zuckerberg wrote in a social media post. “I’m looking forward to working closely with him to advance his scientific vision."

The new lab will focus on advancing foundational AI models, including Meta's open-source Llama series, along with various AI products and core research initiatives. Meta has committed to investing hundreds of billions of dollars in AI computing infrastructure to support these efforts.

Expressing enthusiasm about the company's AI trajectory, Zuckerberg said, "The next few years are going to be very exciting!"