Meta has intensified the ongoing artificial intelligence talent war by hiring Shengjia Zhao, a co-creator of ChatGPT and former lead scientist at OpenAI, as chief scientist for its Superintelligence Labs. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta´s CEO, publicly announced Zhao´s appointment on social media, lauding him as a pioneer responsible for significant advances in artificial intelligence, including his work on GPT-4 and leadership of synthetic data initiatives at OpenAI. Zhao will work closely with Zuckerberg and Alexandr Wang, the recently appointed chief artificial intelligence officer at Meta and the founder of Scale AI.
This high-profile recruitment comes amid Meta´s multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence investment spree. The company recently undertook a massive investment in Scale AI, signaling ambitious plans for its new Superintelligence Labs division, which will focus on foundational model research and next-generation artificial intelligence projects. In addition to Zhao, Meta has successfully hired three researchers who previously launched OpenAI´s Zurich office—Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai—all of whom also bring experience from Google´s DeepMind. The core composition of Meta´s new artificial intelligence research arm now features notable alumni from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.
The competition for leading artificial intelligence talent remains fierce, with industry estimates suggesting there are fewer than a thousand people globally who can build advanced frontier models. Companies lacking Meta´s deep pockets are using unconventional recruitment strategies, such as offering access to coveted high-end computing resources. There are widespread reports of both Meta´s Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI´s Sam Altman personally contacting prospective hires, sometimes even inviting them to their homes. While some executives, like DeepMind´s Demis Hassabis, characterize Meta´s aggressive poaching as rational given its perceived need to catch up, others, including Altman, have voiced concerns over Meta´s so-called ‘giant offers’ and the potential impact on workplace culture and mission alignment. Both OpenAI and Meta declined immediate comment on these developments.
