Outlook Business Desk
Mira Murati, the Albanian-American former Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of OpenAI, has reportedly turned down a massive $1 billion offer from Mark Zuckerberg's Meta to join its Superintelligence Unit. Instead, she has chosen to work on her own AI venture, Thinking Machines Lab.
According to Wired, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta offered employees of Mira Murati’s AI start-up, Thinking Machines Lab, up to a massive $1 billion to join its AI Superintelligence team. The offer highlights Meta’s aggressive push to recruit top minds in AI leadership.
According to the report, Mira Murati's team members were offered packages that ranged between $200 million to $1 billion — every single one of which was rejected as employees refused to join Meta. “So far at Thinking Machines Lab, not a single person has taken the offer,” Murati told Wired.
Value their independence and Murati’s vision over big tech job offers, the Thinking Machines Lab team has chosen to remain with the start-up, according to sources.
Born in Albania in 1988, Mira Murati earned a scholarship at 16 to study at Pearson College UWC in Canada. She holds two degrees—a BA in Mathematics from Colby College and a BEng in Mechanical Engineering from Dartmouth.
Before OpenAI, Murati had also worked at Goldman Sachs, Zodiac Aerospace, and Tesla. She joined Sam Altman’s OpenAI in 2018 and quickly rose to become the start-ups Chief Technology Officer, and lead groundbreaking projects like ChatGPT, DALL·E, and Codex.
Murati also briefly took over as CEO of OpenAI in 2023 after Sam Altman was removed by the company's board during a boardroom shake-up. Altman was reinstated five days later, and Murati returned to her role as Chief Technology Officer.
Murati, who started Thinking Machines Lab after an abrupt exit from OpenAI in September 2024, has joined a growing list of former ChatGPT executives launching their own AI ventures. Her start-up focuses on building responsible, open-source AI systems with a long-term public benefit vision.
Mira Murati’s AI start-up, Thinking Machines Lab, recently secured $2 billion in funding. The fundraise reflects strong investor interest in her vision to build transformative and transparent AI—outside the shadow of big tech.