Mira Murati Starts New AI Startup, Recruits 20 Researchers From OpenAI

JAKARTA - OpenAI's former Chief Technology Officer, Mira Murati, launched an AI startup called Thinking Machines Lab on Tuesday, February 18, with a team of about 30 leading researchers and engineers from competitors including OpenAI, Meta and Mistral.

The latest participants in this bustling AI startup space want to build an artificial intelligence system that includes human values and aims for more applications than its competitors, the company said in a blog post on Tuesday.

This demonstrates Murati's ability, an old executive at OpenAI, to recruit top researchers from her former employer. About two-thirds of the company consists of former OpenAI employees including Barret Zoph, a well-known researcher who left the ChatGPT maker on the same day as Murati late September. Zoph will serve as head of the startup technology.

OpenAI co-founder John Schulman is the startup's chief scientist. Schulman left OpenAI for Anthropic rivals in August, saying he wanted to "focus on AI alignment".

AI alignment refers to the process of embedding human values into AI models to make them more secure and more reliable the main focus of startup Murati. This company has also held talks to raise venture capital funds from investors.

Murati - who will be the CEO of the Thinking Machines Lab - is one of the growing list of former OpenAI executives launching AI startups. The other two, Anthropic and Safe Intelligence, have attracted former OpenAI researchers and amassed billions in funding.

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Thinking Machines Lab says its approach is different from competitors because of the joint design between research and product teams. They said they would contribute to research on AI alignment by sharing code, datasets, and model specifications.

"While the current system excels in programming and mathematics, we are building an AI that can adapt to a spectrum full of human expertise and enable wider spectrum of applications," the startup said.

Murati joined OpenAI in June 2018, leading the development of ChatGPT and frequently appeared with CEO Sam Altman as the company's public face. His sudden resignation was one of a series of high-profile releases from the company when he underwent changes to the governance structure.

Prior to OpenAI, he worked at augmented reality Leap Motion startups and at Tesla.