Mira Murati: 10 things to know about the new CEO of OpenAI

One moment, he’s an AI superstar, the poster child for Generative AI with the future in his hands. The next, he is, well, gone.

Sam Altman’s removal on Friday from OpenAI – the startup he founded and led as CEO – sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley and far beyond.

OpenAI is behind ChatGPT, the chatbot that went viral almost exactly a year ago, catapulting Generative AI into the public consciousness.

The company put out a statement on November 17 announcing that it had ousted co-founder and CEO Altman. The board asked Altman to exit because it no longer had confidence in his ability to lead the San Francisco-based startup.

"Mr Altman's departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.”

Altman, who helped start OpenAI as a nonprofit research lab in 2015, was thrust into the spotlight a year ago with the launch of ChatGPT and subsequent rush to rollout this transformative technology.

Altman predicted AI will prove to be “the greatest leap forward of any of the big technological revolutions we’ve had so far.”

In the year since Altman catapulted ChatGPT to global fame, he has become the most sought-after voice on the opportunities and risks of AI, speaking first in Washington and then touring the world to speak with multiple heads of state, from India to Abu Dhabi.

Described by CNN as an “overnight quasi-celebrity”, he is also credited with almost singlehandedly convincing Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to commit US$10 billion to the company.

And as recently as the day before his firing, Altman was speaking onstage at the APAC Economic Cooperation Summit in San Francisco.

Curious and curiouser.

Altman, 38, himself posted on X: “I loved my time at openai. It was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit… will have more to say about what’s next later.”

While rumours of what might happen next swirl – from a re-negotiation with Altman for his return, to the setting up of a new venture, Mira Murati, the company's chief technology officer, has been named interim CEO as OpenAI conducts a search for Altman's permanent replacement. 

So, who is Mira Murati?

While she doesn’t have quite the celebrity status of Altman, she has impressive credentials and an impressive career as a tech industry leader and is widely respected in the AI world.

In fact, just a month ago, she was named among Fortune’s 100 most powerful women.

Just 34 years old, Murati has served as OpenAi CTO since May 2022, and has been instrumental in not only steering OpenAI’s strategy but leading the distribution of ChatGPT.

In an official statement released on Friday, OpenAI said Murati “brings a unique skill set, understanding of the company’s values, operations, and business, and already leads the company’s research, product, and safety functions”.

“Given her long tenure and close engagement with all aspects of the company, including her experience in AI governance and policy, the board believes she is uniquely qualified for the role and anticipates a seamless transition while it conducts a formal search for a permanent CEO,” the statement added.

Here are 10 more things to know about Mira Murati.

1

TIME Magazine named her one of 100 emerging leaders

Murati was named in the TIME100 Next 2023 list as one of 100 emerging leaders from around the world who are shaping the future and defining the next generation of leadership. In TIME, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote: “Through her dedication to democratising AI, her ability to bring together diverse teams, and the fearlessness with which she tackles technical challenges, Mira has helped to scale the company from a startup to one of the most important AI companies in the world. As a result, Mira has helped build some of the most exciting AI technologies we've ever seen."

2

She joined OpenAI in 2018 as she believed Generative AI was the future

Murati joined OpenAI in 2018 when it was still a research lab as she believed “there’s not going to be a more important technology that we will build than [generative AI]”. As VP of the lab’s AI and partnerships, she first began working on OpenAI’s supercomputing strategy and managing a couple of research teams. She was promoted to SVP of research, product and partnerships in 2020 before taking over as CTO in 2022, where she managed a 375-person tech team. According to the company, Murati has played a “critical role” in the growth of OpenAI from a small startup to an AI trailblazer. She is part of the leadership team.

3

She led distribution of ChatGPT

Murati’s contributions to the creation of ChatGPT and Dall-E, the text-to-image models developed by the company, marked her as one of the “brains” behind the project, which led to her appointment as CTO and in 2022, she was empowered to look after the distribution of ChatGPT. As well as delivering on the timely development of the various versions of ChatGPT, she manged OpenAI’s relationship with Microsoft, as investor and partner deploying it technology – and played a key role in shaping the company’s AI policy in Washington and Europe. Under her leadership, OpenAI has translated academic research into practical products, making AI accessible.

4

She appeared on The Daily Show

Murati made an appearance on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah last October, just a month before ChatGPT was release. On the show, Noah asked her how she coped with the implication AI has for jobs and she said the technology not only impacts society, but that society also “can and should shape it”.

5

She has played a key role in shaping AI policy

An advocate of regulating AI, her insights into the governance and policy aspects of AI have been particularly influential and her experience in AI governance and policy is in part behind her promotion to CEO. Cognizant of the risks, Murati has consistently battled for the involvement of governments, regulators and other industry players to shape the future of the technology. In speaking with TIME Magazine in February, she expressed her concerns over the misuse of AI and in speaking with Wired in July, Murati said AI is going to change entire industries and so it is “very important” to start actually integrating it into every layer of society and think about things like copyright law, privacy, governance and regulation.

6

She speaks multiple languages

As well as being proficient in the language of ChatGPT, Murati is trilingual. Born in 1988 in Albania, where she grew up during the country’s shift from communism to democracy, Murati moved to Canada with her family age 16 having secured a high school scholarship to Pearson College UWC. As a result, she speaks multiple languages including Albanian, Italian and English.

7

She is a mechanical engineer

Murati pursued engineering as a career and this led her to Dartmouth College, where she graduated in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. Her interest grew from the theoretical to building things and during her undergraduate years, she built a hybrid race car. She also interned at Goldman Sachs, where she gained valuable experience in the financial sector.  

8

She has experience in VR and AR

Murati has previously held engineering and tech roles in several large companies in aerospace, automotive, VR and AR, where she was involved in doing applications of AI in the real world. Of her experience in these roles, she “very quickly believed that AGI would be the last and most important major technology that we built” and she wanted to be at the heart of it, she said in an interview with Wired in July. This is what led her to join OpenAI, then a non-profit research lab, in 2018.

9

She spent three years at Tesla

Prior to joining OpenAI in 2018, she spent three years at Tesla as a senior product manager where she played a pivotal role in the development of the dual-motor Model S, the Model X Sport Utility Vehicle and Autopilot, the company’s AI-powered driving software. During her TV interview with Trevor Noah, Murati said this stint at Tesla was a formative experience for her as she went “through the whole experience of design and deployment of a whole vehicle”. After this, she took her engineering expertise to Leap Motion, a startup specialising in sensor and VR technology, where she served as VP of Product and Engineering.

10

Her favourite film is 2001: A Space Odyssey

In an interview with TIME Magazine earlier this year, she said her favourite film is 2001: A Space Odyssey, as it “continues to stir my imagination with its imagery and music, especially the breathtaking sequence where the space shuttle docks accompanied by the waltz of Johann Strauss’s Blue Danube Waltz, inciting contemplation of the weightlessness of this event and the magnificence of the moment”.