Mira Murati, Chief Technology Officer at OpenAI, a company backed by Microsoft, has announced her departure, adding to the growing list of executive exits from the AI startup this year.
In her message, Murati expressed her gratitude to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman, acknowledging their shared success in advancing the frontiers of AI.
Murati, who played a key role in OpenAI’s advancements, shared the news via a post on X (formerly Twitter), stating “There’s never an ideal time to step away from a place one cherishes, yet this moment feels right.”
Who Is Mira Murati?
Mira Murati is a renowned figure in the field of artificial intelligence. She has been the former Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI, the company behind groundbreaking AI models like ChatGPT and DALL-E 2.
Murati has been with OpenAI for over six years, having joined in 2017. She briefly stepped into the role of CEO during the company’s leadership, following the board’s temporary ousting of Altman.
Before her tenure as CTO, a position she assumed in May 2022, Murati served as OpenAI’s VP of Applied AI and Partnerships.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Murati joined OpenAI as the “VP of Applied AI and Partnerships” in December 2020 and was promoted to CTO in May 2022. Before OpenAI, she worked at virtual and augmented reality startup Leap Motion and at Tesla.
As CTO, Murati was a prominent public figure at OpenAI, appearing alongside Altman to introduce major innovations, including the launch of the GPT-4o model, capable of conducting realistic voice conversations.
Murati started her profession as a summer analyst at Goldman Sachs in 2011.
Murati has done her Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) in Mechanical from Dartmouth College, Hanover, US.
Why Did Mira Murati Quit Open AI?
“I’m stepping away because I want to create the time and space to do my own exploration,” she said on X post.
“I have made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI,” she wrote, thanking the team for their work together.
“My six-and-a-half years with the OpenAI team have been an extraordinary privilege,” Murati said.
Is Mira Murati Indian?
Despite some reports in the media, Mira Murati is not Indian. She was born in Albania to Albanian parents and received her education in Canada.
Google Searches on Mira Murati
Interest in Mira Murati’s profile and career picked up in India as news of her exit from OpenAI broke out. On Google, searches for her name showed an upward trend from 7am on Thursday. The searches peaked at 8:42am, showing a dip since then.
Most searches were made from Karnataka, where India’s tech hub Bengaluru is located, followed by Haryana and Delhi.
Indian netizens were also curious about her seemingly Indian-souding name. Related searches included keywords like ‘openai mira murati’, ‘openai’, ‘mira murati indian’, ‘cto mira murati’, and ‘mira murati husband’.
Open AI’s CEO Sam Altman Responds
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded to Murati’s X post with one of his own, saying, “It’s hard to overstate how much Mira has meant to OpenAI, our mission, and to us all personally.”
“I feel tremendous gratitude towards her for what she has helped us build and accomplish, but I most of all feel personal gratitude towards her for the support and love during all the hard times. I am excited for what she’ll do next,” Altman said, adding that the company would say more about the leadership transition plan soon.
Three Exits From OpenAI
Apart from Murati, VP Research Barret Zoph and Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew announced their departures via X on Wednesday afternoon.
The San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup is negotiating a new $6.5 billion financing round valuing the company at $150 billion, contingent on the company upending its corporate structure.
The company plans to restructure to a for-profit benefit corporation and will give CEO Sam Altman an equity stake, news agency Reuters reported on Wednesday.
Currently, a non-profit board controls the for-profit entity, an unusual structure which led to members of the non-profit board ousting Altman in November 2023 over a breakdown in communication and loss of trust. He was reinstated after five days.
The funding round has not closed yet and the company is in the process of finalizing it.
It was unclear whether the executives’ departure could affect the ongoing fundraise. Some fundraising documents contain a “material adverse change” clause which allows investors to withdraw from a deal if the company encounters anything that could have a significant negative impact.
In August, OpenAI co-founder John Schulman said on X that he had joined rival AI company Anthropic and another co-founder, Greg Brockman, also said on X he was taking a sabbatical through the end of the year. A third co-founder, chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, left OpenAI in May.
(With agency inputs)
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