Mira Murati’s AI venture expands team with key talent, including a former OpenAI executive, as the mysterious startup continues to poach top talent from prominent AI firms.
Mira Murati’s AI Startup Makes First Hires, Including Former OpenAI Executive
Mira Murati’s artificial intelligence startup has made its first hires, including a former executive from OpenAI. The news comes as the mysterious startup continues to poach top talent from prominent AI firms.
The latest addition is Jonathan Lachman, who recently left his position as head of special projects at OpenAI. Lachman joined Murati’s new venture, which is focused on exploring artificial general intelligence (AGI). This is not the first high-profile hire Murati has made since leaving OpenAI in September last year.
Murati’s startup has recruited roughly 10 researchers and engineers from competitors including OpenAI, Character AI, and Google DeepMind. Despite its early stages, the company is making significant strides in attracting top talent. However, its product direction and name remain unknown.
A spokesperson for OpenAI confirmed Lachman’s departure, while Murati and Lachman declined to comment on their new roles. The move comes as a surprise given the tumultuous past of OpenAI, where Murati served as interim CEO after CEO Sam Altman was abruptly fired by the company’s board of directors in late 2023.
Altman described Murati’s promotion as “the low point” of the dramatic leadership crisis that briefly consumed OpenAI. However, he also praised her abilities, saying she “did a great job during that weekend in a lot of chaos.” When Murati stepped down from the company 10 months later, she thanked Altman in her goodbye letter, expressing her desire to create time and space for her own exploration.
Murati’s departure from OpenAI was followed by several other high-profile exits, including those of OpenAI’s vice president of research, Barret Zoph, chief research officer, Bob McGrew, and cofounder and chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever. Sutskever went on to found Safe Superintelligence, a startup focused on AI safety, which has already raised $1 billion in funding.
The news of Murati’s new hires highlights the ongoing competition between top AI firms. Anthropic, another major OpenAI competitor, was founded by former OpenAI executives and has raised billions of dollars in funding, including $8 billion from Amazon.
