Mira Murati

Mira Murati is an engineer and technology executive whose work has centered on bringing complex technical systems into products. Born in Albania, she studied mechanical engineering at Dartmouth College. Her early career included work at Tesla and the augmented-reality company Leap Motion, giving her experience with hardware, software, and the interfaces through which people use technology.

Murati joined OpenAI in 2018 and became its chief technology officer in 2022. She helped oversee research, engineering, and product work during a period that included the public release of ChatGPT and the development of multimodal systems. The role required coordination across technical teams as experimental model capabilities moved into services used outside the laboratory.

She briefly served as OpenAI’s interim CEO during the organization’s leadership crisis in November 2023. After leaving OpenAI in 2024, she founded Thinking Machines Lab, publicly announced in 2025. Its stated direction emphasizes making AI more understandable and adaptable, with attention to collaboration between people and AI systems.

Thinking Machines Lab introduced Tinker as a tool for customizing models, reflecting an interest in helping researchers and developers shape model behavior for particular needs. Murati’s contribution is principally technical and organizational leadership across research and product development. Her career connects the capabilities of large models with the engineering choices needed to make those capabilities accessible and useful.