Mira Murati, former chief technology officer (CTO) of OpenAI, has founded a new artificial intelligence (AI) startup. Ilya Sutskever, a co-founder of OpenAI, has also embarked on a venture, as key figures who left the company continue to pursue their own paths in the AI market.
According to the Financial Times (FT) and others on the 18th (local time), Murati has established the AI startup "Thinking Machines Lab" (TML) and stated that the goal is to develop "more understandable, customizable, and high-performance AI systems."
TML has welcomed John Schulman, a co-founder of OpenAI, along with Jonathan Rakhman, who was head of special projects, and former vice president Barrett Zoff. The company noted that it would promote a research culture by sharing technology blogs, papers, and codes.
Murati joined OpenAI in 2018 and led the development of ChatGPT and the image generation model DALL-E. In November 2023, when CEO Sam Altman was ousted, she served as interim CEO and supported his return. It is reported that Murati's departure from the company in September last year shocked many employees.
Meanwhile, Ilya Sutskever, a co-founder of OpenAI, established the AI startup "Safe Superintelligence" (SSI) last year. He has aimed to develop safe AI systems along with Daniel Gross, a former AI lead at Apple, and Daniel Levy, a former researcher at OpenAI.
Bloomberg reported that SSI is seeking to raise over $1 billion (1.441 trillion won) in investments and has surpassed a valuation of $30 billion (approximately 43.233 trillion won) in less than a year. Bloomberg assessed that SSI is becoming "one of the most valuable private technology corporations in the world."
While SSI focuses on safe AI development, specific research details have not been disclosed.