Shengjia Zhao — formerly of OpenAI — will be chief scientist at Meta's new Superintelligence Lab, Mark Zuckerberg announced on Threads on Friday. Why it matters: The company is spending billions of dollars to hire key employees as it looks to jumpstart its effort and compete with Google,

Zhao, previously a research scientist at OpenAI, played a pivotal role in creating GPT-4 and various lighter models such as version 4.1 and o3. He is among at least eight researchers who have recently transitioned from OpenAI to Meta.

Shengjia Zhao, a former OpenAI researcher, has been appointed chief scientist of Meta's newly launched Superintelligence Lab, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced last Friday.