Mira Murati

Mira Murati was born on December 16, 1988, in Vlorë, Albania. At 16 she won a United World Colleges scholarship to attend Pearson College on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, and graduated in 2005.⁠[1]

She attended Colby College as a Davis UWC Scholar and, as a Dual-Degree Program student, earned both a B.A. from Colby and a B.E. from Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering.⁠[2]

She received a B.A. in mathematics from Colby College in 2011, the same year she worked as a summer analyst intern at Goldman SachsGoldman SachsGoldman Sachs is an American financial services group headquartered in New York whose businesses include investment banking, securities trading, asset management, and wealth management. It traces its origins to the commercial paper business Marcus Goldman founded in 1869; it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1999 under the ticker GS and became a bank holding company in 2008. David Solomon serves as chairman and chief executive officer.Open the full entry in Tokyo, and a B.E. in mechanical engineering from the Thayer School of Engineering in 2012.⁠[1]

From 2012 to 2013 Murati worked as an advanced concepts engineer at Zodiac Aerospace. In 2013 she joined TeslaTeslaTesla is an American electric vehicle and energy company whose businesses span automobiles, solar energy, and battery energy storage. Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, its shares are listed on Nasdaq under the ticker TSLA.Open the full entry as a senior product manager on the Model X program.⁠[1]

At Tesla she led the design, development and launch of vehicle products, including the Model X. She then managed the product and engineering teams at the augmented reality company Leap Motion, where she was vice president of product and engineering from 2016 to 2018.⁠[2][1]

In June 2018 Murati joined OpenAI as vice president of applied AI and partnerships, and in 2020 she was promoted to senior vice president of research, product and partnerships.⁠[1]

Before becoming chief technology officer, she led OpenAI’s hardware strategy, managed its reinforcement learning and safety research teams, and led product and deployment.⁠[2]

Murati became chief technology officer of OpenAI in 2022, overseeing the teams that worked on ChatGPT, DALL-E, Codex and Sora.⁠[1]

As chief technology officer she oversaw research, product development and deployment at OpenAI.⁠[2]

On April 11, 2024, Dartmouth Engineering announced that Murati would take part in a Q&A event following the Thayer School of Engineering’s 2024 Investiture and would receive an honorary degree at Dartmouth’s Commencement the following day.⁠[2]

At a speaking engagement at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering, Murati said, “Some creative jobs maybe will go away, but maybe they shouldn't have been there in the first place,” remarks that drew criticism, including from some Dartmouth students.⁠[1]

On September 25, 2023, Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry (a16z) released the conversation “Where We Go From Here with OpenAI's Mira Murati” on its YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel and website, in which Martin CasadoMartin CasadoMartin Casado is a computer scientist, entrepreneur and venture capitalist who is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he leads infrastructure investing. A major proponent of software-defined networking, he co-founded Nicira and served as its chief technology officer, and after VMware acquired the company he ran its networking and security business; he also co-founded the nonprofit MuralNet.Open the full entry of a16z spoke with Murati, then OpenAI’s chief technology officer. It was recorded in August 2023 at a live event in San Francisco as part of a16z’s “AI Revolution” series.⁠[3][4]

The conversation covered her background, math and physics, natural language interfaces, the OpenAI roadmap, scaling laws, whether one model would “rule them all,” and the next five to ten years. Murati described the story behind ChatGPT’s release: it grew out of safety research on reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) and the earlier WebGPT project, and OpenAI released it to gather real-world feedback.⁠[3][4]

Describing her background, she said, “I was born in Albania, just after the fall of communism,” and that after studying mechanical engineering she worked in aerospace as an engineer. On ChatGPT she said, “The precursor to ChatGPT was actually another project that we called WebGPT.”⁠[4]

On November 17, 2023, OpenAI’s board announced Sam AltmanSam AltmanSam Altman is an entrepreneur and investor, and the co-founder and chief executive officer of OpenAI. He previously served as president of Y Combinator and founded the location-based social service Loopt. He also helped found Tools for Humanity and Merge Labs, has invested in energy and life sciences ventures, and has driven public discussion of AI governance, employment, and wealth distribution.Open the full entry’s departure and named Murati, the company’s chief technology officer, interim CEO effective immediately. The announcement described her as a member of OpenAI’s leadership team for five years who led the company’s research, product and safety functions.⁠[5]

Her tenure as interim CEO lasted three days. On November 29, 2023, OpenAI announced that Altman had returned as CEO and that Murati would return to her role as CTO.⁠[1][6]

On September 25, 2024, Murati announced on X that she was leaving OpenAI after six and a half years “to create the time and space to do my own exploration,” saying her primary focus was ensuring a smooth transition.⁠[7]

In the post she wrote, “While I may no longer be in the trenches with you, I will still be rooting for you all.”⁠[8]

The same day Sam Altman announced on X that chief research officer Bob McGrew and research vice president Barret Zoph were also leaving, saying the three had made their decisions independently and amicably.⁠[7]

On February 18, 2025, Murati unveiled the artificial intelligence company Thinking Machines Lab, with herself as CEO, Barret Zoph as chief technology officer and John Schulman as chief scientist. The company then had about 30 employees, including several of Murati’s former OpenAI colleagues.⁠[9]

The company said it aimed to “build multimodal systems that work with people collaboratively” rather than focusing solely on fully autonomous systems. Thinking Machines Lab was set up as a public benefit corporation.⁠[9][1]

In July 2025 Thinking Machines Lab closed a $2 billion seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from NVIDIANVIDIANVIDIA is an American semiconductor and computing technology company that provides graphics processing units, artificial intelligence infrastructure, networking interconnects, and computing software, and is listed on Nasdaq under the ticker NVDA.Open the full entry, AccelAccelAccel is a venture capital firm co-founded in 1983 by Arthur Patterson and Jim Swartz. It invests through regional teams and early-stage, growth and late-stage funds, with operations in the United States, Europe, Israel and India. Its investment history includes Facebook, Flipkart, Atlassian, Slack and other technology businesses. Fundraising totals, regulatory assets under management and portfolio-company transaction values are distinct measures.Open the full entry, ServiceNowServiceNowServiceNow is an American enterprise cloud software company founded by Fred Luddy in 2004. It initially entered the enterprise market through IT service management and later expanded its workflow platform to employee service, customer service, security, and artificial intelligence applications. The company listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2012 under the ticker symbol NOW.Open the full entry, CiscoCiscoCisco Systems, Inc. is an American networking technology company, incorporated in 1984, headquartered in San Jose, California, and listed on Nasdaq.Open the full entry, AMDAMDAMD (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.) is a publicly traded U.S. semiconductor company founded in 1969 and headquartered in Santa Clara, California; its stock trades on Nasdaq under the ticker AMD. The company develops CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, adaptive systems-on-chip and related software, mainly for the data center, personal computer, gaming and embedded markets; its product brands include Ryzen, EPYC, Radeon and Instinct.Open the full entry and Jane Street, at a $12 billion valuation. The money was raised by the company, not invested by Murati personally.⁠[10]

Murati wrote on X, “Thinking Machines Lab exists to empower humanity through advancing collaborative general intelligence.”⁠[10]

On October 1, 2025, Thinking Machines Lab launched its first product, Tinker, an API for fine-tuning language models that supports a range of open-weight models, including large mixture-of-experts models such as Qwen-235B-A22B. It launched in private beta for researchers and developers and was free to start, with the company saying usage-based pricing would follow.⁠[11]

When announcing Thinking Machines Lab’s funding, Murati said, “We believe AI should serve as an extension of individual agency.”⁠[1]

Thinking Machines Lab: Official website: https://thinkingmachines.ai/ (opens in a new window).⁠[12]

X: Public account: https://x.com/miramurati (opens in a new window).⁠[8]