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Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati has announced her new startup. Unsurprisingly, it\u2019s focused on AI.<\/p>\n
Called Thinking Machines Lab<\/a>, the startup, which came out of stealth today, intends to build tooling to \u201cmake AI work for [people\u2019s] unique needs and goals,\u201d and to create AI systems that are \u201cmore widely understood, customizable, and generally capable\u201d than those currently available.<\/p>\n Murati is heading up Thinking Machines Lab as CEO. OpenAI co-founder John Schulman<\/a> is the company\u2019s chief scientist, and Barret Zoph<\/a>, OpenAI\u2019s ex-chief research officer, is the CTO.<\/p>\n In a blog post shared with TechCrunch, Thinking Machines Lab wrote that while AI capabilities have advanced dramatically, \u201ckey gaps\u201d remain.<\/p>\n \u201cThe scientific community\u2019s understanding of frontier AI systems lags behind rapidly advancing capabilities,\u201d the blog post reads. \u201cKnowledge of how these systems are trained is concentrated within the top research labs, limiting both the public discourse on AI and people\u2019s abilities to use AI effectively. And, despite their potential, these systems remain difficult for people to customize to their specific needs and values.\u201d<\/p>\n Thinking Machines Lab plans to focus on building \u201cmultimodal\u201d systems that \u201cwork with people collaboratively,\u201d according to the blog post, and that can \u201cadapt to the full spectrum of human expertise and enable a broader spectrum\u201d of applications.<\/p>\n \u201c[W]e are building models at the frontier of capabilities in domains like science and programming,\u201d the blog post stated. \u201cUltimately, the most advanced models will unlock the most transformative applications and benefits, such as enabling novel scientific discoveries and engineering breakthroughs.\u201d<\/p>\n AI safety will be another core tenet of Thinking Machines Lab\u2019s work. The company said that it plans to contribute to safety by preventing misuse of the models it releases, sharing best practices and recipes for how to build safe AI systems with the industry, and supporting external research on alignment by sharing code, datasets, and model specifications.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll focus on understanding how our systems create genuine value in the real world,\u201d Thinking Machines Lab wrote in its blog post. \u201cThe most important breakthroughs often come from rethinking our objectives, not just optimizing existing metrics.\u201d<\/p>\n I started Thinking Machines Lab alongside a remarkable team of scientists, engineers, and builders. We\u2019re building three things: \u2014 Mira Murati (@miramurati) February 18, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Murati left OpenAI last October after six years at the company<\/a>. At the time, she said she was stepping away to \u201cdo her own exploration.\u201d<\/p>\n Murati came to OpenAI in 2018 as VP of applied AI and partnerships. After being promoted to CTO in 2022, she led the company\u2019s work on\u00a0ChatGPT<\/a>, the text-to-image AI\u00a0DALL-E<\/a>, and the code-generating system\u00a0Codex<\/a>, which powered early versions of\u00a0GitHub\u2019s Copilot<\/a>\u00a0programming assistant.<\/p>\n Mirati was briefly OpenAI\u2019s interim CEO after CEO Sam Altman\u2019s abrupt firing<\/a>. Altman has described her as a close ally. <\/p>\n For months, rumors have flown of Murati hiring high-profile AI researchers and staffers for an AI venture. Thinking Machines Lab\u2019s blog lists 29 employees from OpenAI, Character AI, and Google DeepMind, among other top firms.<\/p>\n Thinking Machines Lab is actively hiring machine learning scientists and engineers, as well as a research program manager, per the company\u2019s post.<\/p>\n At one point, Murati was said to be in talks to raise over $100 million from unnamed VC firms. The blog didn\u2019t confirm or deny this.<\/p>\n Before OpenAI, Murati spent three years at Tesla as a senior product manager of the Model X, the automaker\u2019s crossover SUV, during which Tesla released early versions of\u00a0Autopilot, its AI-enabled driver-assistance software. She also was VP of product and engineering at\u00a0Leap Motion<\/a>, a startup building hand- and finger-tracking motion sensors for PCs.<\/p>\n Murati joins a growing list of former OpenAI execs launching startups, including rivals such as Ilya Sutskever\u2019s Safe Superintelligence<\/a> and Anthropic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u2013 Helping people adapt AI systems to work for their specific needs
\u2013 Developing strong foundations to build more capable AI systems
\u2013 Fostering a\u2026<\/p>\n