Mira Murati

Ermira "Mira" Murati (born 1988) is an Albanian-American business executive.^[2] She launched an AI startup called Thinking Machines Lab in February 2025. She previously served as chief technology officer of OpenAI.

Mira Murati
Born	(1988-12-16) 16 December 1988 (age 36) Vlorë, People's Socialist Republic of Albania
Education	Colby College (BA) Dartmouth College (BEng)
Employers	OpenAI (2018–2024) Thinking Machines Lab (2024–present)[1]
Known for	Artificial intelligence
Title	Founder and CEO

Early life and education

Murati was born on 16 December 1988 in Vlorë, in what was then the People's Socialist Republic of Albania.^[3][4] At age 16, she won a United World Colleges (UWC) academic scholarship to study at the Pearson College in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, from which she graduated in 2005.^[5][6]

Murati studied at a dual-degree program in the United States, receiving a Bachelor of Arts from Colby College in 2011,^[7][8] followed in 2012 by a Bachelor of Engineering degree from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College.^{[9][10][11][12][13]}

Career

Early career

Murati briefly worked for Zodiac Aerospace as an intern before joining electric car company Tesla in 2013. At Tesla she joined as a product manager on the Model X directly after her bachelor's in mechanical engineering. From 2016 until joining OpenAI in 2018, she worked for augmented reality start-up Leap Motion (now Ultraleap). In 2018, she joined OpenAI as the VP of applied AI and was later promoted to CTO.^{[14][15][16][17][18]}

OpenAI

Murati joined OpenAI in 2018 as the "VP of Applied AI and Partnerships" in December 2020, and became chief technology officer (CTO) in May 2022.^[19] As CTO, she led its work on ChatGPT, Dall-E, Codex and Sora, while overseeing its research, product and safety teams.^{[15][20][21][22]} She oversaw technical advancements and direction of OpenAI's various projects, including the development of advanced AI models and tools. Murati worked on several of OpenAI's notable products, such as the Generative Pretrained Transformer (GPT) series of language models.^[23][24] Commenting about the potential loss of creative jobs to AI, Murati said that "maybe [the jobs] shouldn’t have been there in the first place".^[25] In October 2023, Murati was ranked 57th on Fortune's list of "The 100 Most Powerful Women in Business of 2023".^[26][27]

In November 2023, Murati briefly took over as interim chief executive officer of OpenAI following the removal of Sam Altman from the job.^{[28][29][12][30]} She was replaced by Emmett Shear three days later, who was in turn ousted when Altman was reinstated five days after being removed. Following this series of events, Murati returned to her role as CTO.^[31][32][33] In June 2024, Dartmouth College awarded Murati an honorary Doctor of Science for having "democratized technology and advanced a better, safer world for us all".^[34][35]

In September 2024, Murati announced that she was stepping down as CTO to allow her the opportunity to "do my own exploration".^[36][37] This move came amid a wider executive exodus as OpenAI chief research officer Bob McGrew and a vice president of research, Barret Zoph, also announced their departures soon after.^[38]

Thinking Machines Lab

Main article: Thinking Machines Lab

In February 2025 Murati launched a new public benefit corporation called Thinking Machines Lab which claimed to aim to "to make AI systems more widely understood, customizable, and generally capable."^[39][40] She was reported to have hired "a team of about 30 leading researchers and engineers from competitors including Meta, Mistral, and OpenAI."^{[41][42][43][44]} People involved with the startup include OpenAI cofounder John Schulman, and advisors Alec Radford and Bob McGrew.^[45] The following month, Bloomberg reported that the company had reached an estimated valuation of $9 billion, with an "average founder stake value" of $1.4 billion.^[46]

In April 2025, Thinking Machines Lab reportedly aimed for a $2 billion seed round (requiring a minimum investment of $50 million).^{[40][47][45][1]} The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and included participation from the government of Albania, valuing the company at $12 billion.^[48][2]

Thinking Machines Lab follows a governance structure wherein Mira Murati holds a deciding vote on board matters, weighted to provide her with a majority decision-making capability.^[49]

Publications

• Murati, Ermira (Spring 2022). "Language & Coding Creativity". Daedalus. 151 (2). Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS): 156–167. doi:10.1162/daed_a_01907. Retrieved 25 September 2024.