# Mira Murati

Co-founder and CEO, Thinking Machines Lab. TIME100 AI 2026, Thinkers. Served as OpenAI's interim CEO during the 2023 ouster, then co-founded Thinking Machines Lab, whose $2 billion raise TIME calls the largest seed round ever. ([time.com](https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/mira-murati/))

- Born: 1988-12-16, Vlorë, Albania ([en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mira_Murati))
- Education: BE, Mechanical engineering, Dartmouth College, 2012; BA, Colby College, 2011 ([en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mira_Murati), [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mira-murati-4b39a066))
- Career: Thinking Machines Lab (Co-founder and CEO, 2025 to now); OpenAI (Chief Technology Officer, 2018–2024); Leap Motion (VP of Product and Engineering, 2016–2018); Tesla (Senior Product Manager, Model X, 2013–2016) ([en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mira_Murati), [time.com](https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/mira-murati/), [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mira-murati-4b39a066))
- TIME profile: https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/mira-murati/
- Profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/most-influential-people-in-ai/mira-murati

- Left Albania at 16 on a scholarship to Pearson College UWC on Vancouver Island, Canada. ([en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mira_Murati))
- Was a product manager on Tesla's Model X, then ran product and engineering at AR startup Leap Motion before OpenAI. ([en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mira_Murati))
- Was OpenAI's interim CEO for three days in November 2023 after the board removed Sam Altman. ([en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mira_Murati))
- Thinking Machines Lab raised $2 billion, which TIME calls the largest seed round in history. ([time.com](https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/mira-murati/))
- Its first open-weights model, Inkling, has 975 billion parameters and was trained on 45 trillion tokens. ([simonwillison.net](https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/16/inkling/))
- Says success is measured by what the company delivers, not how much of the founding team remains. ([time.com](https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/mira-murati/))