Former OpenAI CTO prepares to raise capital to launch new AI startup

One way or another, after a series of personnel changes and last year’s “revolt” of the OpenAI board of directors, only two people who were originally at its origins remained at the helm of this relatively young company, including CEO Sam Altman. Mira Murati, who recently left the state, is preparing to raise capital to launch her own AI startup.

Image source: LinkedIn

These rumors were spread by Reuters at the end of the working week. At OpenAI, Mira Murati until recently served as CTO, but last fall she had to take over the company for a short period of time while Sam Altman retired for a few days. Now sources say Meera Murati has begun consulting with venture capitalists to raise funds to create a new company that would develop artificial intelligence software products based on legacy models. It is not specified whether Murati will head the new startup.

Early in the negotiations, it becomes clear that Murati’s reputation as one of the founders of OpenAI will help her raise more than $100 million. Barret Zoph, who left OpenAI on the same day as Murati at the end of September this year, may also find a job in the new company . Previously, The Information reported that he is going to organize his own startup, and Murati is trying to lure OpenAI employees to the new startup. Under Murati’s leadership, OpenAI created ChatGPT and DALL-E for six years, and she took an active part in concluding a deal with Microsoft, which provided the startup with serious funding.

She began working at OpenAI in June 2018, and in May 2022 she was appointed CTO of the startup. Until 2018, she managed to work at Leap Motion and Tesla. Murati took part in the presentation of the GPT-4o model in May of this year and often spoke publicly alongside CEO Sam Altman. Many high-level executives fired from OpenAI quickly founded their own startups with a similar focus, including Anthropic and Safe Superintelligence. The high interest of investors in the topic of artificial intelligence will certainly allow Murati to follow the same path without much difficulty.