--- alias: - Mira Murati born: 1988-12-16 category: Technologists created: 2026-06-20 location: San Francisco, California summary: Mira Murati is the Albanian-born engineer who rose to chief technology officer of OpenAI, oversaw the development of ChatGPT, DALL-E, and Sora, served as interim chief executive during the November 2023 board crisis, left in September 2024, and founded the AI lab Thinking Machines Lab. tags: - Person - MiraMurati - OpenAI - ThinkingMachinesLab - ArtificialIntelligence - SiliconValley updated: 2026-06-20 --- Mira Murati (born December 16, 1988, in Vlorë, Albania) is an engineer and technology executive who served as the chief technology officer of [OpenAI](/organizations/openai/), where she oversaw the development of ChatGPT, DALL-E, Codex, and the video model Sora, and who briefly served as the company's interim chief executive during the November 2023 board crisis that removed and reinstated [Sam Altman](/people/sam-altman/). She left OpenAI in September 2024 and founded the AI lab [Thinking Machines Lab](/organizations/thinking-machines-lab/) in early 2025.[^1][^2] ### From Tesla to OpenAI CTO Murati grew up in Albania as the country emerged from communist rule, attended a United World College in Canada, and took a mechanical-engineering degree from Dartmouth College. After internships at Goldman Sachs and a stint at the French aerospace group Zodiac Aerospace, she spent three years at Tesla as a senior product manager for the Model X during the period when the company shipped early versions of its Autopilot driver-assistance software. In 2016 she joined Leap Motion, a startup building hand- and finger-tracking sensors, as vice president of product and engineering, before moving to OpenAI in 2018.[^1][^2] At OpenAI Murati began as vice president of applied AI and partnerships and was promoted to chief technology officer in 2022. In that role she led the teams that built and shipped the company's most consequential products: the DALL-E image generators, the Codex model that powers GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, and the Sora text-to-video system. She became one of the most prominent technical executives in the industry, describing OpenAI's iterative-deployment philosophy as a matter of putting "the technology in contact with reality" to learn from how people use it.[^1][^2] ### Interim CEO and Departure When OpenAI's nonprofit board removed Altman on November 17, 2023, it named Murati interim chief executive. Her tenure lasted only days: within the weekend the board moved to install Emmett Shear, the former chief executive of Twitch, as a second interim leader, and Murati joined the roughly 700 employees who signed a letter demanding Altman's return and threatening to follow him to Microsoft. Altman was reinstated within the week, and Murati resumed her role as chief technology officer under the reconstituted board.[^3][^4] On September 25, 2024, Murati announced that she was leaving OpenAI, writing that "there is never an ideal time to step away from a place one cherishes, yet this moment feels right." Her departure came amid a broader exodus of senior research leaders from the company, including [Ilya Sutskever](/people/ilya-sutskever/), the chief scientist who had left that May, and the research executives Bob McGrew and Barret Zoph, who left around the same time as Murati. Within months she had begun assembling a new lab from the same talent pool.[^4][^5] ### Thinking Machines Lab In February 2025 Murati launched Thinking Machines Lab, a research company she founded with a team drawn heavily from OpenAI, including the cofounder and reinforcement-learning pioneer [John Schulman](/people/john-schulman/) as chief scientist, Barret Zoph as chief technology officer, and early staff such as Bob McGrew, Lilian Weng, Andrew Tulloch, and Luke Metz. In July 2025 the company closed a roughly 2-billion-dollar seed round at a 12-billion-dollar valuation, led by Andreessen Horowitz, a deal reported as among the largest seed rounds in Silicon Valley history.[^5][^6] Murati positioned the company around accessible, customizable AI and an open-research posture, saying the lab would unveil its first work within months and would include "a significant open source offering" for researchers and startups building their own models. Bloomberg reported in 2026 that the company was in talks for a funding round that would value it near 50 billion dollars.[^6][^7] [^1]: "Who is Mira Murati? OpenAI's new interim CEO," *TechCrunch,* November 17, 2023, on her Albanian birth, Dartmouth degree, Zodiac Aerospace, Tesla Model X and Autopilot work, Leap Motion, joining OpenAI in 2018, and the products she oversaw as CTO. https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/17/who-is-mira-murati-openais-new-interim-ceo [^2]: "Mira Murati Biography," aidigitalx, on her birthplace of Vlorë, December 16, 1988, her education, and her career path through Tesla and Leap Motion to OpenAI CTO. https://aidigitalx.com/mira-murati-biography-leading-ai-innovator/ [^3]: "Effective Altruism's Role in the OpenAI Chaos, Explained," *Bloomberg,* November 22, 2023, on the November 2023 board crisis, the interim leadership sequence, and Emmett Shear. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-22/effective-altruism-s-role-in-the-openai-chaos-explained [^4]: "OpenAI CTO Mira Murati says she's leaving the company," reporting on the September 25, 2024 departure and the "this moment feels right" statement. *CNBC,* September 25, 2024. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/25/openai-cto-mira-murati-announces-shes-leaving-the-company.html [^5]: "OpenAI cofounder John Schulman is joining Mira Murati's startup," *Fortune,* February 6, 2025, on the founding of Thinking Machines Lab and the OpenAI-derived team. https://www.fortune.com/2025/02/06/openai-john-schulman-mira-muratis-startup-anthropic [^6]: "Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab is worth $12B in seed round," *TechCrunch,* July 15, 2025, on the roughly 2-billion seed round, the 12-billion valuation, the Andreessen Horowitz lead, and the open-source plans. https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/15/mira-muratis-thinking-machines-lab-is-worth-12b-in-seed-round/ [^7]: "Mira Murati's Thinking Machines seeks $50 billion valuation in funding talks," *Bloomberg/Yahoo Finance,* 2026. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mira-muratis-thinking-machines-seeks-212328387.html