Ex-OpenAI researcher threatened to quit Meta’s Superintelligence Team a day after joining: Here’s what happened

OpenAI

Meta made big headlines earlier this year when it managed to hire some of the brightest talent from OpenAI, including Shengjia Zhao, one of the key researchers behind ChatGPT. But according to a Financial Times report, Zhao nearly walked out of the company just days after joining.

The report says Zhao even signed paperwork to return to OpenAI before Meta convinced him to stay. The tech giant quickly promoted him to the role of Chief AI Scientist, a move that CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally announced on Threads. The promotion appears to have sealed Zhao’s decision to remain at Meta.

Zhao’s case highlights the challenges Meta is facing in retaining top AI researchers despite offering massive pay packages. The company may be succeeding in luring talent, but keeping them has proven to be difficult.

Several other researchers have already left shortly after being hired. Ethan Knight, who joined just weeks ago, has already departed. Another former OpenAI researcher, Avi Verma, went through onboarding but never showed up on his first day. Rishabh Agarwal, a research scientist who joined in April, announced his exit within weeks, saying that while Meta’s pitch was strong, he felt drawn toward “a different kind of risk.” Even veteran employees like Chaya Nayak and Loredana Crisan, who had been with Meta for nearly a decade, have resigned recently.

This turbulence comes after Meta’s much-hyped Llama-4 model failed to meet expectations, with Chinese labs overtaking it in the open-source AI race. In response, Zuckerberg reorganized Meta’s AI division and created the Superintelligence Lab, now led by Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old Scale CEO. Wang has been tasked with driving Meta’s AI efforts and even oversees veterans like Yann LeCun. But his leadership has also meant major reshuffles, which may have unsettled some employees.

Meta, however, has downplayed the departures. In a statement to FT, the company said Zhao had always been set to become Chief AI Scientist and that some level of attrition is normal. “We appreciate that there’s outsized interest in seemingly every minute detail of our AI efforts, no matter how inconsequential or mundane, but we’re just focused on doing the work to deliver personal superintelligence,” the company said.

Still, the unusually quick exits raise questions about how smooth Meta’s ambitious AI push will be. With billions invested and pressure mounting to catch up with rivals like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, the company’s Superintelligence Lab seems to be hitting early bumps in its journey.