Former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati, formally shared details of her new AI startup on Tuesday, announcing a leadership team stacked with former colleagues and a plan to tackle “key gaps” around the most advanced, “frontier” AI systems. The details about Thinking Machine Lab, announced in a blog post on Tuesday, come roughly six months after Murati left OpenAI and shed light on one of the AI industry’s most highly anticipated projects.
The AI research and product startup described its mission as making “AI systems more widely understood, customizable, and generally capable.”
“Knowledge of how these systems are trained is concentrated within the top research labs, limiting both the public discourse on AI and people’s abilities to use AI effectively,” the blog post said.
OpenAI cofounder John Schulman will serve as the startup’s chief scientist, joining Murati after departing Anthropic just five months after signing on, as Coins2Day was first to report last week. Barret Zoph, who was OpenAI’s vice president of research, will be the chief technology officer of Thinking Machines Lab.
At least seven of the 29 Thinking Machines Lab employees announced on Tuesday were formerly with OpenAI. Jonathan Lachman was former head of special projects; Lilian Weng was former vice president; Luke Metz, Sam Shleifer, and Stephen Roller were former research scientists. The remaining employees include researchers from Meta, GoogleDeepMind, CharacterAI, and Mistral.
Murati left OpenAI in September 2024, saying she wanted to “create the time and space to do my own exploration.” In October 2024, she was in talks to raise over $100 million in funding for the stealth startup, according to media reports. Last month, the startup made several high-profile hires, including Lachman, former head of special projects at OpenAI.