Meet Mira Murati, former OpenAI exec behind a $12B startup making AI accessible to all

While not as widely recognized as Sam Altman or Mark Zuckerberg, Murati is now one of Silicon Valley's most sought-after tech entrepreneurs. Formerly the chief technology officer at OpenAI, where she helped create ChatGPT, Murati left in 2024 to launch her own venture.

"I was always interested in how the brain works and intelligence, more theoretically and at abstract levels," Murati said in a 2023 "Behind the Tech" podcast episode with Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott. "But I’d say that, you know, the art of sort of what I pursued was more in the theme of trying to apply my knowledge and try to apply technology to really hard problems that in some way makes our lives better."

In February 2024 she founded Thinking Machines Lab, a public benefit corporation focused on developing AI systems that are more accessible, customizable and human-aligned, according to Fortune magazine. The startup raised a record $2 billion in seed funding, launched its first product in October, and is now valued at $12 billion.

Mira Murati attends the 2024 Met Gala in New York, U.S. Photo by AFP

Born in Vlore, Albania, Murati, 36, grew up during a time of political upheaval and economic instability as the country transitioned from "totalitarian communism to liberal capitalism." "There is this really fierce competition for knowledge, and education is everything," she told Scott. "That’s the setting that I grew up in. I was always very hungry for knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge."

Her parents, both high school literature teachers, encouraged her academic pursuits. While they focused on the humanities, she was drawn to math and science. "When I was a kid, I just gravitated toward math," she said. "I would do problem sets all the time and then eventually did Olympiads and I loved doing that. It was such a passion."

At 16, she won a scholarship from United World Colleges, a program that fosters intercultural understanding and social responsibility, allowing her to attend Pearson College in Vancouver Island, British Columbia. After graduating in 2005 Murati followed an unconventional academic path, earning degrees in mathematics from Colby College in 2011 and mechanical engineering from Dartmouth College’s Thayer School of Engineering in 2012. These dual degrees provided her with both analytical thinking and technical expertise, which would prove valuable in her later career in Silicon Valley.

Murati's career began with a summer internship at Goldman Sachs in Tokyo in 2011 and a brief stint at French company Zodiac Aerospace. In 2013 she joined Tesla as a senior product manager for the Model X program, contributing to the SUV project. In 2016 Murati moved to Leap Motion, a startup specializing in augmented reality technology, as vice president of product and engineering. Over the next two years she developed human-computer interaction technology, which laid the foundation for her future work in artificial intelligence.

In June 2018 Murati joined OpenAI as vice president of applied AI and partnerships. She played a pivotal role in developing ChatGPT and other AI innovations, rapidly advancing through the ranks to become senior vice president of research, product and partnerships in 2020, and then CTO in 2022. In November 2023 Murati briefly became interim CEO of OpenAI after the board dismissed Sam Altman, sparking turmoil within the company. After Altman’s reinstatement, Murati went back to her CTO position. After 6.5 years with OpenAI, Murati announced her resignation in September 2024 to pursue "my own exploration," she said in a post on X.

Murati's influence in the tech world has been widely recognized. She was ranked 57th on Fortune's "100 Most Powerful Women in Business" in 2023 and named in Time's "100 Most Influential People in AI" in 2024. In June 2024 Dartmouth College awarded her an honorary PhD in science for her contributions to AI, technology and engineering.

In February this year Murati launched Thinking Machines Lab, a company committed to making AI more accessible and democratized. The startup has recruited 30 researchers and engineers from top AI firms, including OpenAI, Google and Meta. In October, it launched its first product, Tinker, a flexible API for fine-tuning language models.

With Tinker, the company aims to democratize access to advanced AI capabilities through fine-tuning tools. "We believe [Tinker] will help empower researchers and developers to experiment with models and will make frontier capabilities much more accessible to all people," Murati said in a recent interview with U.S. tech magazine Wired.

"We’re making what is otherwise a frontier capability accessible to all, and that is completely game-changing." The platform allows users to customize Meta’s Llama and Alibaba’s Qwen models with just a few lines of code, simplifying the complex distributed training process that usually requires specialized expertise and extensive computing resources.

Thinking Machines Lab has faced challenges, including the departure of co-founder Andrew Tulloch to Meta in mid-October, the Wall Street Journal reported. Earlier this year, Zuckerberg reached out to Murati and offer to acquire her startup. When Murati declined, Zuckerberg launched a "full-scale raid" to recruit more than a dozen employees from the 50-person company, offering packages ranging from $200 million to $1.5 billion. Tulloch was among those targeted, though none of the employees accepted Meta’s proposals at that time.

As the AI industry rapidly evolves, Murati’s approach offers a compelling alternative to the winner-takes-all dynamics that define Silicon Valley. Whether Thinking Machines Lab can maintain its independence while scaling its technology and influence remains to be seen. However, Murati’s track record suggests she is building a lasting legacy in AI.

"We believe AI should serve as an extension of individual agency and, in the spirit of freedom, be distributed as widely and equitably as possible."