🤖 This page was written by AI and reviewed by a human. 2026-07-15. Version 0.17
Mira Murati
Status
Born in 1988 (age –). Living in San Francisco Bay Area.
Criminal status: No personal convictions
Summary
Mira Murati is an Albanian-American AI executive who served as chief technology officer at OpenAI from May 2022 to September 2024, overseeing the development of ChatGPT, DALL-E, Codex, and Sora. Born in Vlore, Albania and educated at Dartmouth College's Thayer School of Engineering, she joined OpenAI in 2018 after earlier roles at Tesla and augmented reality startup Leap Motion.
In November 2023, the OpenAI board briefly removed CEO Sam Altman and appointed Murati as interim CEO, a role she held for five days before Altman was reinstated. Murati had pushed for his return throughout the crisis. She stepped down as CTO in September 2024, stating she wanted to "do my own exploration."
In February 2025, Murati founded Thinking Machines Lab alongside a team of former OpenAI researchers. The company raised a record USD 2 billion seed round in July 2025 at a USD 12 billion valuation. It later unveiled a full-duplex conversational AI research preview in May 2026 and published a manifesto in July 2026 setting out a commitment to distributed, customizable AI.
Business Relationships
John Schulman, co-founder of OpenAI, joined Thinking Machines Lab as chief scientist upon its founding in February 2025. Barret Zoph, a former OpenAI post-training lead who co-founded TML, was terminated by Murati in January 2026 amid disputed claims of unethical conduct. By May 2026, roughly a third of the company's founding team, including three of its six co-founders, had departed for competing AI labs offering substantially higher compensation packages.
Ownership
Murati is founder and CEO of Thinking Machines Lab, which she controls as the founding executive. The company raised USD 2 billion from Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, Accel, ServiceNow, Cisco, AMD, and Jane Street. Her founder's stake is estimated at approximately USD 1.4 billion.
Family & Heirs
Murati was raised in Vlore, Albania by parents who were both high school teachers. She emigrated to Canada for high school on a Davis UWC scholarship and built her career in North America after studying at Dartmouth College.
Evidence
2023-02-05 - 😇 - AI must be regulated, says CTO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI
2024-03-13 - 😈 - OpenAI's Mira Murati is 'not sure' where Sora's training data comes from
2024-05-17 - 😈 - Top OpenAI researcher resigns, saying company prioritized 'shiny products' over AI safety
2024-06-09 - 😇 - Dartmouth awards Mira Murati honorary Doctor of Science for democratizing technology
2024-06-24 - 😈 - OpenAI CTO says AI could kill creative jobs that 'shouldn't have been there in the first place'
2025-02-18 - 😇 - Thinking Machines Lab is ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati's new startup dedicated to open and accessible AI
2025-07-15 - 😇 - Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab raises USD 2 billion seed round to empower humanity through AI
2025-10-01 - 😇 - Thinking Machines Lab launches Tinker open-source AI fine-tuning service
2026-01-16 - 😈 - Behind the defections from Mira Murati's Thinking Machines: money, compute constraints, and co-founder firing
2026-05-06 - 😇 - Ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati testifies Sam Altman undermined her and was 'not always' honest
2026-05-12 - 😇 - Thinking Machines Lab unveils full-duplex 'interaction models' AI research preview
2026-06-05 - 😇 - Mira Murati resurfaces with AI governance warning, new product
2026-07-10 - 😇 - Thinking Machines Lab publishes manifesto committing to open, distributed, human-centered AI
Analysis
Murati's record centers on making advanced AI accessible and advocating for external oversight. As CTO of OpenAI, she led the teams that built products used by hundreds of millions of people. She publicly called for AI regulation before it was a mainstream industry position, and after leaving OpenAI she founded a company explicitly committed to open source AI tools and sharing AI safety research with the research community.
Thinking Machines Lab's July 2026 manifesto reiterated that commitment, and the company's May 2026 research preview of a full-duplex conversational model demonstrated concrete technical progress toward it.
Her tenure at OpenAI also produced documented failures. In March 2024, she gave evasive answers when asked about the copyright provenance of Sora's training data, declining to say what content was used.
In May 2024, OpenAI's head of alignment resigned publicly, stating that safety culture had taken a backseat to product launches — a cultural failure that occurred under Murati's leadership as CTO. That June, she said some creative jobs affected by AI "maybe shouldn't have been there in the first place," a remark criticized for minimizing the livelihoods of creative workers whose output trains the models she built.
At Thinking Machines Lab, Murati demonstrated willingness to act against a co-founder for reported misconduct, though the disputed termination triggered a wave of departures in January 2026. Her public testimony in the Musk v. OpenAI trial described Sam Altman as dishonest and the company as having drifted from its stated mission.
Questions
How much personal responsibility does Murati bear for the decline in OpenAI's safety culture during her CTO tenure, given that CEO Sam Altman had ultimate authority over company priorities?
Will Thinking Machines Lab's stated open source commitments survive the commercial pressures that come with a USD 12 billion valuation and potential path to USD 50 billion?
What structural checks is Murati implementing at TML to address the same safety-vs.-products tradeoffs she witnessed and criticized at OpenAI?
Does the continued departure of founding team members to competing labs reflect a retention or culture problem beyond ordinary market competition for AI talent?
Redemption Arc
Murati's departure from OpenAI and founding of Thinking Machines Lab represents a concrete course correction. By building a company with an explicit commitment to open research, interpretable AI, and sharing safety best practices, she has put resources behind the positions she has advocated publicly. Her June 2026 AI governance warning about structural checks in the industry — delivered as her company began releasing products — shows continued engagement on the issues she identified while at OpenAI.