Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati launches AI startup Thinking Machines Lab
The former OpenAI CTO's new venture aims to bridge key gaps in AI by making these systems more understandable, customisable, and generally capable.
Mira Murati, the former Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at ChatGPT maker , launched her own AI startup, Thinking Machines Lab, an artificial intelligence research and product company, on Wednesday.
The new AI venture aims to bridge key gaps in AI by making these systems more understandable, customisable, and generally capable.
“While AI capabilities have advanced dramatically, key gaps remain. The scientific community's understanding of frontier AI systems lags behind rapidly advancing capabilities. 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. To bridge the gaps, we're building Thinking Machines Lab to make AI systems more widely understood, customisable and generally capable,” the company stated in a blog post.
Thinking Machines Lab will focus on open science, releasing research publications and code while focusing on human-AI collaboration across industries. It will also integrate state-of-the-art model intelligence, high-quality infrastructure, and advanced multimodal capabilities.
Announcing the launch, Murati said on X, “We're building three things: helping people adapt AI systems to work for their specific needs, developing strong foundations to build more capable AI systems, fostering a culture of open science that helps the whole field understand and improve these systems. Our goal is simple, advance AI by making it broadly useful and understandable through solid foundations, open science, and practical applications."
According to Reuters, The firm will include scientists, engineers, and builders who have contributed to leading AI products and libraries such as Character.ai, PyTorch, and Mistral, besides over 20 former OpenAI employees, including Barret Zoph (CTO), co-creator of ChatGPT, Andrew Tulloch, and Brydon Eastman, among others.
In September, Murati left OpenAI after a tenure of six-and-a-half years. In an internal memo to the company, she said she is stepping away to create the time and space to do her "exploration".
“For now, my primary focus is doing everything in my power to ensure a smooth transition, maintaining the momentum we've built,” Murati said.
Edited by Suman Singh
