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Mira Murati
Albanian-American business executive From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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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.
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Early life and education
Murati was born on 16 December 1988 in Vlorë, Albania.[3][4] At age 16, she won a United World Colleges (UWC) academic scholarship to study at Pearson College in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, from which she received an International Baccalaureate 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]
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Career
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Early career
Murati briefly worked for Zodiac Aerospace as an intern before joining the electric car company Tesla in 2013 as a product manager on the Model X. From 2016 to 2018, she worked for the augmented reality start-up Leap Motion (now Ultraleap).
OpenAI
In 2018, she joined OpenAI as the VP of Applied AI and partnerships.[14][15] She became chief technology officer (CTO) in May 2022.[16] She led OpenAI's work on ChatGPT, Dall-E, Codex and Sora, while overseeing its research, product and safety teams.[17][18][19][20] 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.[21][22] 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".[23] In October 2023, Murati was ranked 57th on Fortune's list of "The 100 Most Powerful Women in Business of 2023".[24][25]
In November 2023, Murati became interim chief executive officer of OpenAI following the removal of Sam Altman from the job.[26][27][12][28] She was replaced by Emmett Shear three days later, who left when Altman was reinstated five days later. Following these events, Murati returned to her role as CTO.[29][30][31] 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".[32][33]
In September 2024, Murati announced that she was stepping down as CTO to allow her the opportunity to "do my own exploration".[34][35] 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.[36]
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."[37][38] She was reported to have hired "a team of about 30 leading researchers and engineers from competitors including Meta, Mistral, and OpenAI."[39][40][41][42] People involved with the startup include OpenAI cofounder John Schulman, and advisors Alec Radford and Bob McGrew.[43] 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.[44]
In April 2025, Thinking Machines Lab reportedly aimed for a $2 billion seed round (requiring a minimum investment of $50 million).[38][45][43][1] The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and included participation from the government of Albania, valuing the company at $12 billion.[46][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.[47]
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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.
References
External links
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