Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Friday that former OpenAI researcher Shengjia Zhao will lead research efforts at the company’s new AI unit, Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL). Zhao contributed to several of OpenAI’s largest breakthroughs, including ChatGPT, GPT-4, and the company’s first AI reasoning model, o1.

Meta names former OpenAI researcher Shengjia Zhao as Chief Scientist of its new AI unit, Meta Superintelligence Labs, focused on frontier AI model development.

The move underscores Meta’s strategy of spending aggressively now to secure a dominant position in what it views as the next foundational technology platform.