Mira Murati

Ermira 'Mira' Murati is the founder and CEO of Thinking Machines Lab, an AI startup she launched in February 2025 after departing OpenAI. The company raised approximately $2 billion in funding at a $12 billion valuation in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz, making it one of the largest early-stage AI fundraises in history.

Born on December 16, 1988, in Vlorë, Albania, Murati moved to Canada at age 16 on a United World Colleges scholarship to study at Pearson College. She graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in Mechanical Engineering.

Murati's career path took her through Goldman Sachs, Zodiac Aerospace (an Airbus subsidiary), Tesla's Model X engineering team, and Leap Motion before joining OpenAI in 2018. As OpenAI's CTO, she oversaw the development and launch of some of the most transformative AI products in history, including ChatGPT, DALL-E 2 and 3, GPT-4, and the Sora video generation model. She briefly served as interim CEO of OpenAI during the November 2023 board crisis.

At Thinking Machines Lab, Murati is building AI tools designed to work for people's 'unique needs and goals,' with a leadership team drawn heavily from former OpenAI colleagues.