After leaving OpenAI, Mira Murati debuts her AI startup Thinking Machines Lab

Thinking Machines Lab, an AI startup founded by former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, has tapped about 30 leading researchers and engineers from competitors such as OpenAI, Meta and Mistral, it said in a blog post on Tuesday.

The team — roughly two-thirds of which comprises former OpenAI employees — includes Barret Zoph, a prominent researcher who left the ChatGPT maker on the same day as Murati in late September. Zoph will serve as the startup’s technology chief.

OpenAI co-founder John Schulman is the startup’s chief scientist. Schulman left OpenAI for rival Anthropic in August, citing wanting to “focus on AI alignment”.

AI alignment refers to a process of encoding human values into AI models to make them safer and more reliable — a key focus for Murati’s startup.

Murati is among a growing list of former OpenAI executives, who are responsible for the launch of startups such as Anthropic and Safe Superintelligence. She is raising funds from venture capitalists for her new artificial intelligence startup, Reuters had reported in October.

“While current systems excel at programming and mathematics, we’re building AI that can adapt to the full spectrum of human expertise and enable a broader spectrum of applications,” the startup said.

The company plans to enable external research on alignment by sharing code, datasets, and model specifications, it said.

After Murati joined OpenAI in June 2018, she frequently appeared alongside CEO Sam Altman as the public face of the ChatGPT maker.

Her abrupt resignation had marked another high-profile exit from the company as it undergoes major governance structure changes.

Prior to OpenAI, she had worked at augmented reality startup Leap Motion and Tesla.

—Krystal Hu and Arsheeya Bajwa, Reuters