Who is Mira Murati? Former OpenAI CTO Who Rejected Mark Zuckerberg’s $1 billion Offer to join Meta AI
Mira Murati, the Albanian-American tech visionary, has founded the AI startup Thinking Machine Lab, becoming one of the most influential figures in the AI world. However, her new company is not the reason she is headlines nowadays. Even the bigger news is, Mira turned down an eye-watering $1 billion offer straight from Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta. Not only does this move bring her to the headlines, but it also shows her confidence and long-term vision in the new AI startup.
Mira Murati: A mastermind behind ChatGPT
Mira has served as the chief technology officer at OpenAI and played a significant part in rolling out one of the first and most influential AI tools in the world, i.e., ChatGPT. She has been the core part of the development team to introduce platforms like Dall-E, Codex, and ChatGPT- a platform that entirely redefined how people imagined content generation and online assistance.
Mira’s role in supporting ChatGPT has been a catalyst for introducing the artificial intelligence to the world, while automating operations across industries, from healthcare to finance and entertainment. Mira has been a visionary leader since her tenure at OpenAI. She encourages the safe, aligned, and responsible development of AI tools that encourage businesses to think deeply about their impact on society.
Mira Murati is popularly with the name “AI Brain” behind OpenAI’s many ambitious projects, which have led her team through innovation as well as rough periods. Mira carries a blend of technological expertise with human-centric thinking, which leads her to a very new step- being the founder of her own company.
Mira delivered a keynote at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2025, warning that “AI without values is intelligence without conscience”. Moreover, she has also been assisting the European Commission on the emerging AI regulatory framework, which is very rare for a startup founder.
Thinking Machine Lab- A vision of a billion-dollar and ethical AI enterprise
Founded in early 2025, the AI startup has been grabbing all the attention in the market since its inception. While the startup has not launched any product to date, it has already received a seed funding of a whopping amount $2 billion at a valuation $12 billion.
According to the reports, the startup’s goal is to curate a customizable, accessible, and interpretable AI system that can entirely redefine the AI scenario. With Murati’s name connected to the status, expectations are sky high for what it has to unfold in the future.
What made Murati decline $1 billion offer from Meta
Meta has recently offered tempting offers to Murati’s team, ranging from $200 million to $1 billion, to join its newly launched project Superintelligence Lab. To a surprise, everyone in the team simply declined the offer. There is no doubt that every team member believes their equity in Thinking Machine Lab is going to be worth a lot more than these million dollars. At the same time, another reason is their belief in Murati’s vision for a better and advanced AI landscape.
While IT has been an industry where massive paychecks often drive the experts’ decisions, the surprising reaction of Murati’s team has left every jaw dropped. The rejection of a million dollars from Meta signals their trust in Murati’s mission and the startup’s vision. Moreover, many find it a rare chance to be able to reshape the future of AI without the constraints of a corporate giant.
Who is Mira Maruti: A Name Emerging in AI’s Future
Mira Maruti has gained recognition as a leader in the AI world from the very beginning. She has been featured as Time’s 100 Most Influential People in AI (2024) as well as Fortune’s 100 Most Powerful Women in Business (2023). As Thinking Machine Lab gains momentum, Mira seems to be already announcing that she is not just a builder of AI but a shaper of AI’s future.
