(Bloomberg) -- Mira Murati, the former chief technology officer at OpenAI, has joined forces with several executives who worked at the ChatGPT maker to launch a new artificial intelligence startup.The company, called Thinking Machines Lab, will focus on building artificial intelligence models and products that support more “human-AI collaboration” across every field of work, according to a blog post released Tuesday. “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 company said. Other key executives on Murati’s team include John Schulman, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and will be chief scientist at Thinking Machines Lab, and Barret Zoph, who served as OpenAI’s vice president of research and will be the new startup’s CTO. Lilian Weng, OpenAI’s former vice president of safety, has also joined the startup. Out of the nearly 30 current staff members listed in the blog post, more than a dozen were previously at OpenAI, according to those employees’ public LinkedIn profiles. Guessing at what Murati’s company will do and how much money it will raise has become a Silicon Valley parlor game since she stepped down from OpenAI in September. Murati has been in talks with venture capital firms about a funding round, according to people familiar with the matter. And in recent months, she was said to be seeking about $1 billion, one of the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. The company declined to discuss funding plans.
While Thinking Machines Lab does not have a product or model out yet, it claims to have a different philosophy than some other AI companies. The startup is having researchers and product leaders “co-design” in tandem to “make AI systems more widely understood, customizable and generally capable,” according to the blog post.“Instead of focusing solely on making fully autonomous AI systems, we are excited to build multimodal systems that work with people collaboratively,” the startup said, referring to AI models that can work across mediums such as text, audio or video. The company is building models designed to excel in domains like science and programming, with an aim to unlock new breakthrough discoveries in those areas. Thinking Machines Lab is continuing to hire talent in areas such as machine learning and research management, per job listings online.Murati’s startup also plans to frequently publish technical blog posts, papers and code. “We think sharing our work will not only benefit the public, but also improve our own research culture,” the company said.An Albanian-born, Dartmouth-educated engineer, Murati, joined OpenAI in 2018 and was appointed CTO in 2022. During her time there, she shepherded major product releases, including the popular ChatGPT chatbot and advanced voice mode, a feature that lets users talk to the product in essentially real time. She also managed OpenAI’s technical staff.
After OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman was briefly ousted by the board in late 2023, Murati was appointed to serve as the company’s interim CEO. But she quickly joined a group of OpenAI executives pushing for Altman to be reinstated.In the year after Altman returned, OpenAI experienced a wave of high-profile staff exits, including Murati and other leaders who went on to launch AI startups of their own.In June, for example, OpenAI co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever unveiled Safe Superintelligence, a research lab focused on building a safe, powerful artificial intelligence system. Sutskever is now raising more than $1 billion for his startup at a valuation of over $30 billion, Bloomberg has reported.
--With assistance from Rachel Metz, Katie Roof and Lizette Chapman.
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