Meet Mira Murati, the prodigy of 36 -year -old technology that has passed the glory to Openai and is now directing a startup which is a poaching target for Mark Zuckerberg

Murati, the 36-year-old Albanian-American engineer who has become executive-executive, has become a decisive figure in the Boom of AI. His career as a mechanical engineering student to the director of technology who helped create Chatgpt illustrates the rapid transformation of AI and the career technology of those who build it. More recently, its ability to resist the aggressive recruitment efforts of Mark Zuckerberg – including the offers of a billion dollars reported to acquire your business and poaching your talent – has solidified its reputation as a leader willing to trace its own course in an industry dominated by technology giants.

From Albania to the world scene

Born on December 16, 1988 in Vlorë, Albania, in recent years of the country’s totalitarian regime, the first life of Murati was shaped by political upheavals and economic uncertainty. Her parents, two high school teachers who taught literature, encouraged her academic activities, but Murati told CTO Kevin Scott in Microsoft in 2023 that she had “an organic interest in mathematics and sciences”, where she excelled in the Olympiads and competitions throughout her schooling.

At 16, Murati won a UNITED World Colleges scholarship – a program that brings together students from more than 80 countries to promote intercultural understanding and social responsibility – to study at Pearson College on the island of Vancouver in British Columbia. But after graduating from Pearson in 2005, Murati continued an unusual academic path which would prove to be premonitory for his later career. She signed up for a double degree program, completing a baccalaureate in Mathematics in Colby College in 2011 and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering of the Thayer School of Engineering from Dartmouth College in 2012.

Murati’s professional career started with a summer analyst course at Goldman Sachs in Tokyo in 2011, followed by a brief passage as an engineer of advanced concepts at Zodiac Aerospace from 2012 to 2013. She joined Tesla the same year as product manager for the Model X program, contributing to the development of the Tesla SUV project. In 2016, she joined Leap Motion, an augmented reality startup, as vice-president of the product and engineering. During her two -year term, she focused on the progress of human computers interaction technology, helping to shape product offers and business market strategy. This role has perfectly positioned it for the next phase of his career in the development of AI.

OPENAI years

Murati joined Openai in June 2018, as vice-president of the AID AI and partnerships, during a central period for the organization. She quickly climbed the levels, becoming the main vice-president of research, products and partnerships in 2020, before being promoted to chief technology in 2022.

As CTO, Murati supervised the development of some of the most transformative AI technologies in the modern era. She managed teams working on Chatgpt, Dall -E, Codex and Sora – products that have fundamentally changed the way the public interacts with artificial intelligence. His leadership played a decisive role in the Openai scaling of a research organization at one of the most important AI companies in the world.

In November 2023, Murati found himself briefly in the center of the Silicon Valley drama when she was appointed interim CEO after the sudden withdrawal of Sam Altman by the Board of Directors of Openai. Although her mandate only lasted three days before being replaced by Emmett Shear, who then dismissed when Altman was reinstated, the episode underlined it in the organization and industry – and, given the media fire storm, she ended up being the first time that many people heard the name “Mira Murati”.

Recognition and controversy

Murati’s influence has been recognized in the technological industry. It was classified 57th on the fortune list of “100 most powerful women in 2023 business” and presented in the 100 most influential Time people in 2024. In June 2024, Dartmouth College awarded it an honorary doctorate in science, recognizing its contributions to artificial intelligence, technology and engineering.

However, Murati’s mandate in Openai was not without controversy. During a speech commitment to the Thayer School of Engineering in Dartmouth, Murati made comments on the impact of AI on creative jobs that have triggered a significant backlash. “Some creative jobs may disappear, but they might not have been there in the first place,” she said. Critics, including the own student body of Dartmouth, accused him of being deaf to the concerns of artists and writers whose livelihoods are threatened by the automation of AI.

Despite the controversy, Murati has always argued for responsible development of AI and government regulations. In an interview in 2023 with Time Magazine, she said: “It is important for Openai and companies like ours to put this in public conscience in a controlled and responsible manner. But we are a small group of people and we need a ton of more contribution in this system and much more contribution that goes beyond technologies – defined regulators and regulators and all people.”

Laboratory of reflection machines

In September 2024, Murati announced his departure from Openai to continue “My Own Exploration”, publishing the note that she shared with her colleagues on X.

“There is never an ideal time to move away from a place where we cherish, but this moment feels good. Our recent versions of speech with speech and Openal O1 mark the beginning of a new era of interaction and intelligence-the achievements made possible by your ingenuity and your craft cart,” she said. “I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to build and work alongside this remarkable team.”

Months later, in February of this year, Murati officially launched Thinking Machines Lab, a public service company focused on the development of more accessible, customizable and aligned AI systems. The startup has gathered an impressive list of talents, recruiting about 30 researchers and engineers to lead AI companies, including former Openai colleagues, as well as experts from Google, Meta, Mistral and Character AI. The collective expertise of the team and the history of Murati allowed the company to raise $ 2 billion in start -up financing led by Andreessen Horowitz, with the participation of NVIDIA, AMD, ACCEL, ServiceNow, Cisco and Jane Street, which gives it an evaluation of $ 12 billion.

Resist the giants of Silicon Valley

The real Murati leadership test came when the meta-PDG Mark Zuckerberg launched what The Wall Street Journal Called a “large -scale raid” on its startup. Zuckerberg would have approached more than a dozen employees in the company of 50 people, offering plans ranging from $ 200 million to $ 1.5 billion over several years. A researcher would have received an offer worth more than $ 1 billion, while others were promised by $ 50 million and $ 100 million in their first year.

The aggressive recruitment campaign has targeted key figures, including Andrew Talloch, the co -founder of Murati and an automatic learning expert who had worked before more than a decade. Despite astronomical offers, not a single employee has accepted Meta’s proposals – a remarkable demonstration of loyalty in an industry where talent frequently operates for financial incentives.

This resistance testifies to both the leadership of Murati and the team’s belief to think of the mission of the machine laboratory. As she said when announcing the financing of the company: “We believe that AI should serve as an extension of the individual agency and, in a spirit of freedom, be distributed as largely and equitably as possible.”

The present of Murati and the future of AI

With the launch of Tinker, Thinking Machines Lab The laboratory bets that the next AI border does not reside in the construction of ever heavier models, but to democratize access to advanced capacities thanks to fine adjustment tools. The platform currently allows users to personalize the QWEN models of Meta’s Llama and Alibaba using only a few lines of code, managing the complexity of the distributed training which generally requires specialized expertise and important IT resources.

“We believe that (Tinker) will help allow researchers and developers to experiment with models and make border capacities much more accessible to everyone,” Murati told Wired. The company plans to publish additional scientific results to help the broader research community understand the border AI systems.

While the AI ​​industry continues to evolve at a dizzying speed, Murati’s approach offers a convincing alternative to the dynamics of the winners who came to define Silicon Valley. It remains to be seen whether the laboratory for thinking about machines can maintain this independence while expanding its technology and influence, but the history of Murati suggest that it builds something designed to last.

Last June, Murati discussed a wide range of subjects at the most powerful fortune dinner in San Francisco, including Apple partnership, security and confidentiality problems, how she found her love for AI, and more. You can look at the complete conversation below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD0US5BN6LW

For this story, Fortune Used a generative AI to help an initial project. An editor checked the accuracy of the information before the publication.