Former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati launched an AI start-up called Thinking Machines Lab on Tuesday, with a team of about 30 leading researchers and engineers from competitors including OpenAI, Meta and Mistral.
The latest entrant into the crowded AI start-up space wants to build artificial intelligence systems that encode human values and aim at a broader number of applications than rivals, the company said in a blog post on Tuesday.
It shows the ability of Murati, a longtime executive at OpenAI, to poach top researchers from her previous employer.
Roughly two-thirds of the company comprises former OpenAI employees — including Barret Zoph, a prominent researcher who left the ChatGPT maker on the same day as Murati in late September. Zoph will serve as the start-up’s technology chief.
OpenAI co-founder John Schulman is the start-up’s chief scientist. Schulman left OpenAI for rival Anthropic in August, saying that he wanted to “focus on AI alignment”. AI alignment refers to a process of encoding human values into AI models to make them safer and more reliable — a key focus for Murati’s start-up.
More OpenAI employees are expected to join the company, said sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private matters. The company has been in talks to raise venture capital funding from investors, Reuters previously reported.
Murati, who will be Thinking Machines Lab CEO, is among a growing list of former OpenAI executives who have launched AI start-ups. Another two, Anthropic and Safe Superintelligence, have both attracted former OpenAI researchers and raised billions in funding.
Differentiated
Thinking Machines Lab said its approach differentiated from competitors because of its co-design by the research and product teams. It said it would contribute to research on AI alignment by sharing code, data sets and model specifications.
“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 start-up said.
Read: Mira Murati is latest high-profile exit from OpenAI
Murati joined OpenAI in June 2018, leading the development of ChatGPT and frequently appearing alongside CEO Sam Altman as the firm’s public face. Her abrupt resignation was one of a string of high-profile exits from the company as it underwent governance structure changes. Prior to OpenAI, she worked at augmented reality start-up Leap Motion and at Tesla. — Krystal Hu, Anna Tong and Arsheeya Bajwa, (c) 2025 Reuters
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